






MWMyjWalmMflyBB| 


HHH 


nHHHn 



HH 

hHH[||H|HH 


H 

1 

HWrM^KcB— Wb.'Vt— ■ mJ 

^nBBK .♦ j»^gt^MLr;^^«-t^MI— BiMM 

g BIBH»* ‘^^B^*?*^' -^BBBi 'I' ^Hb 
/HBBk^HKi - MB ^ 

cjBBtmr hH^^R ' ‘ 

» .-'■Bk 

WHMI 

H| 

HHImm 

MBaMyWBilliii^ 


















^^B^9^BS^n8B^S^Hm 








































Class 7^ V 
Book n O I e . 
Copglitlil? 

COi^YRIGHT DEPOSm 








1 " 




■• >'. fv'- 







• » 1 . 


■?t \ 




. «♦ 


#'• 


y . 


Mi 



T . 


• '■ ii.Uji ■ lU ‘ 1* j ■f.^V ' ' ' ' 'V' ^ /i *; 


,. • .<>( 


. / ■: . !.•**/• 


r » 1 1 . ' ; 


V ■ • '•*. y 

. f- • : y:-/ 


< \ 


» / 




y • I 

l-»i>. . t» t 




..f 


f.VV;A.^' .. ■': 


f ' 


• « 


t 

• V- 


't: 


- ( 




i k 


L I 







.’<3 , ' V 

■ .-.•fk.Or J ' . i; 

, ., . . \- 4 \] 


+:. '’'Ak .-, kV- k\/ 




'. / J 




«r - 




r ^ ^ 


if'ifV 



.« 


V 




t- . 





k ■ ,> . , 


. r'v ' •■ *•■ yrf.'ii 



*? 

.Ylfk 






r I 


if 


•I ■ » 


-♦■•a • 


f 







■'•'V 1 ^ 


r < V I / u 


♦T- ’! 




,Ji . ■ ' .1 ^ 'Vr 




'». !• 


^ ■ . k,, , V k : ■ -'-f kk ik ‘ :■ ■kkvSkfeil 

'ri'L ' ISmliO^t ■■ ' >* fi 





A ' 





* 


V 


IlA.' 



tS'. ‘ 


V ;i/' * /'.• •" ' 




■/‘k, '■’., 


• Vli 








I 

I 

/ - 


f I” 1" 

>■ . 


t 


s • 


T 


I 





I 


I 


< 


r. 



« 


1 


\ * 

■ • ■' i 







< 


^ I ’ 


4 


'•X 














I 


> 

t 


f 

I 




'.t 


•• . , 

* 


•f . >1 . 


i V ' 


’« I 


* 


■v 


t 




% 


k 


■f 


< 


r # 


k OP 
• \ 

•4 



I 




K 


I 


r 





i 



■t 

ii 


<> 





V 



« 

% 


:1 


t 


m I 






1 


».• . 1 ' 




JOSEPHINE 


i:; 




% 






f 



i'* 




i 

> 


I 

1 

• I 


I 


. ♦ * 
t 

iu 

t 

1 


I 


« 

1 

1 1 


t 


» 


I 




I 



I 




I 








r- * ■'•I^Sl ■ ^ / '■• jf V ' >( ; 

t ♦ - ^ f - ' 4 ~ ^ * ■*■ r • ■# ' * • ■ ■? ■ .r ■ I 

. 'J-- • : •. ■■ r. : '• • --t; 

'trUr - * ' ' ■ ■'■' ■ ■■ - i .t'*-.*^,;*. C"'- 

^ ‘"r ' -*- ■ V .. '. ■i.*:‘i' 


u 


'♦ » 


? • 


f ^ 

»ll • 


t • 


<4 


‘W- 


• \'\ i*L 


ir# 








% ic -. »* • 


IN 


^V’ V 

' - * V I i 1 


r'-fe' * 


e' ' 

* 

•*v 




K 


n* 




A 

i « 




*i ♦ 


••“ FT;^ 



M 

-4l " 

tf ■• -t 

, •■ ■y -► 

• 7 

w * 

' • 'i r 


.^-r’a 

-.1^ 

V*i 

V 

»f • 1 



iJ* ♦ 



. • / 

♦ ^ • 


- »'» 

•• 1 






.- I .A 



“I knew 3our own grandmother, my dear,” said the old gentle- 
man, offering his hand in good-bye. {See page 70.) 



JOSEPHINE 


In War Time 


By 

ELIZABETH CUMINGS 

1 1 

Author of “Miss Matilda Archambeau Van Dorn** 
“A Happy Discipline** and other stories 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 


BOSTON 


NEW YORK 


CHICAGO 


.Cq\\ 


Copyright 1914 
by LUTHER H. CARY 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 


DEC -7 1914 

©CI.A387839 


TO 

MY FATHER 
AND 

MY MOTHER 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. Introducing the Heroine . 

11. The Tragedy of “Dander” 

III. An Army Post 

IV. Josephine Goes to School . 

V. “Being a Saint” 

VI. Bonnets and Frocks .... 

VII. The Question of Earrings 

VIII. First Stitches 

IX. The Girl on the Fence 

X. The “School for Young Ladies” 

XI. Granny Ward^s Tulips 

XII. New Friends 

XIII. Dr. Pardee’s Skeleton 

XIV. The Unexpected Consequences 

XV. Volunteers and Others . 

XVI. Hiram Escapes the Draft . 

XVII. How Madame Panalle Taught French 
XVIII. The Procession without the Flag . 
XIX. Old Friends Appear .... 


PAGE 

I 

8 

i6 

23 

29 

42 

52 

58 

63 

70 

78 

87 

96 

104 

112 

120 

126 

134 

146 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

XX. 

Black Cupid .... 

PAGE 

. 154 

XXL 

The Lawn Fete .... 

. 163 

XXII. 

Josephine Writes a Play . 

. 170 

XXIII. 

The Invisible “Virginia Carter” 

. 180 

XXIV. 

“Scarlet Fever Here” 

. 187 

XXV. 

The Truth about the Tulips . 

. 197 

XXVI. 

Ferndale's Hero 

. 203 

XXVII. 

The President is Killed . 

. 212 

XXVIII. 

At the Concert .... 

. 222 

XXIX. 

Graduation Exercises 

. 230 

XXX. 

A New Mother .... 

. 242 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

“I knew your own grandmother, my 


dear,” said the old gentleman, offer- 
ing his hand in good-bye 

Frontispiece 

“Where are you going with that 
chicken?” demanded Josephine 

Opposite page 5 ^ 

A Ferndale soldier mustered out by 
death ...... 

Opposite page I2i 

Josephine at once knelt down by Cu- 
pid’s chair 

Opposite page 164 


CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCING THE HEROINE 

^^T^ATHERS! Oh fathers!” The voice, if 
A- shrill and compelling, was yet very 
sweet. The two soldierly men walking briskly 
down the graveled walk bordered by grass 
pinks, and leading from the stately front door 
of the Dobard home to the tall front gate, 
halted as a slim little girl wriggled through 
the dense hedge shutting the kitchen garden 
from the lawn. “I haven’t any money,” she 
panted, “and there’s a splendid candy shop 
round only two corners. I’ve only that funny 
pig penny I found the morning after we came 
here, an’ Ann Mary says I should keep it for 
luck, an’ Grandma says it won’t buy things 
anyway.” 

“She’s right. It’s a Jackson token. Keep it 
for a curiosity,” said the shorter and darker of 
the two who had been addressed impartially as 
“fathers” as he hastily searched his pockets for 
coins. “And Josephine, — ” 

“Yes, papa.” 

“Don’t push through the hedges. It is bad 
for the bushes.” 


2 JOSEPHINE 

“But I had to catch you, papa.’’ 

“You should have started sooner. You are 
always making people wait for you. The Cap- 
tain and I have little time to catch our train.” 

He dropped a handful of small silver into her 
palm as he spoke, and after an instant added, 
“Try not to fret Grandmother. She’s not accus- 
tomed to having a little girl about.” 

“She never tries not to fret me,” said Joseph- 
ine, speaking as one does when relating a fact. 

“It’s good for you to be fretted.” Her 
father caught her in his arms and kissed her 
brow and lips. 

“I’m not good when I’m having a bad time,” 
she said gravely and wiping her lips, “though 
I’m not always bad outside, when I feel 
wicked bad inside.” 

“Nothing uncommon in that, little one,” 
commented the taller man as he dropped some 
silver into her pocket. “It’s a great accom- 
plishment keeping the bad in.” 

“Don’t give her money, John!” protested his 
companion as he moved away. 

“Papa Doctor says Mon’t’ a deal,” mur- 
mured Josephine to herself, when the two had 
vanished. “Grandma says the don’ts go along 
with you all your life. She says she meets ’em 
herself even now. And she says more’n folks 
say ’em to you.” 


INTRODUCING THE HEROINE 3 

Very pleasant to look at was little Josephine. 
Her large dark eyes that looked black under 
their long upcurling lashes were really brown, 
shot through with golden sparks. Her neat 
little nose made a fine line with her broad low 
forehead, which was accented by delicately 
penciled brows, and framed in enchanting 
spirals of bright dark hair. 

A high and elaborate wooden fence inclosed 
the Dobard grounds. For lack of other occu- 
pation Josephine climbed to a flat-headed post, 
almost a foot square and screened from the 
house by tall lilacs. A drum, imperative and 
insistent, sounded not far away. It was a snare 
or military drum beaten by a practised hand. 
A few rods up the street a squad of boys were 
playing at soldier. Cocked hats made of news- 
papers were on their heads. A slim boy flour- 
ishing a wooden sword was in command. He 
used his weapon unsparingly, slapping now 
one, now another, as the members of the com- 
pany got out of line. To the shrill threats and 
protests that answered him, he gave no heed. 
Josephine was paying strict attention to his 
orders, when two elderly men paused at the 
corner just below her. 

“Th’ very children are at it!” squeaked the 
short, bald, pink-faced man breathless from 
walking and asthma. “An’ even on th’ Lord’s 


4 JOSEPHINE 

day, that drum’s rolling. I’d like to know how 
much longer we must endure its abominable 
noise.” 

“No doubt as long as President Lincoln 
needs men,” replied the tall, lean, bilious- 
looking man. “Yes, Brother Peck, that drum 
will call till th’ cup of punishment is full for 
us all.” 

“President Lincoln! A butcher!” snorted 
the shorter man. “It’s such fanatics as you 
brought on this fratricidal strife. Yes, sir!” 
He pounded upon the pavement with his cane 
by way of emphasis. “This is the result of your 
praying for downtrodden Africans every chance 
you could make. You needn’t ^Brother’ me!” 

“This war had to be,” the tall man blinked 
down at his companion in sorrowful pity. His 
short-sighted spectacles were gummy and stood 
askew upon his big nose, but there was no mis- 
taking his feelings. “We must become all one 
fabric to stand.” He gazed for an instant at 
the far horizon where in ineffable tints of 
azure rose the distant heights of the Adiron- 
dacks. “Reckoning days come. Brother Peck. 
Nations, like men, must pay the price of their 
sins. For every sigh, every tear, every drop 
of sweat we have wrung from the black man, 
we must pay in blood — the blood of our best 
and dearest.” 



“Where are you going with that chicken?” demanded Josephine. 



1 



INTRODUCING THE HEROINE 5 

snarled Mr. Peck, pounding his 
cane upon the irregular stones of the pavement. 
^‘You forget the Scriptures sanction slavery, 
Elder Vandercook. IVe no patience with ye. 
I’m glad I’m a member of a different church, 
a church which stands by Holy Writ which 
says, ‘Cursed be Canaan.’ ” 

“Noah said that, not God, and it is set down 
simply as history,” replied the old minister 
mildly. Then clasping his hands behind him, 
and bowing gravely, he walked on. 

The company of boys had vanished. De- 
licious scents of blossoming honey-locust and 
syringa filled the air. Somewhere an oriole 
was fluting to his mate. Weary of her perch, 
Josephine was about to slip from it when three 
little girls came around the corner, and through 
the shadows of the tall hedge growing inside the 
quaint fence. The tallest carried a large white 
rooster. The next in height carried a small 
basket and a broad-bladed knife from which 
the end had been broken. The third, a very 
fair girl in a white sunbonnet and a pale blue 
merino dress delicately embroidered, over 
which was a fine white muslin apron, carried 
nothing. 

“Where are you going with that chicken?” 
demanded Josephine as they came just below 
her, “and what are you going to do with him?” 


6 JOSEPHINE 

^‘We’ve got to have meat/’ said the girl w^ith 
the broken knife. She had one very large front 
tooth which seemed too large for her small 
freckled face. ^^Grandaunt Fidelia’s coming, 
and mamma says, ^she has a difficulty.’ ” 

It was plain the three thought to own “a 
difficulty” was a distinction. 

“Father always made ’em into meat afore 
he joined the army,” explained the tallest girl, 
gently stroking the rooster. “He’s an officer, 
and way to Washington, and I don’t know 
where now. Mamma says like enough he’ll 
be a general, like grandfather in th’ Mexican 
war, an’ he told us to take care of her, an’ 
she was a Towne, and never saw chickens made 
into meat. So we’re taking Dander way off to 
scrunch his head off.” 

“Mamma’ll boil him, and make dumplings,” 
explained the girl with the knife. “He’ll make 
two good dinners that way.” 

“We buy our chickens,” said the girl in the 
blue merino loftily. “We never have ’em 
around alive.” 

“Your father ain’t to th’ war, Flo Leet,” 
reproved the older girl. “He’s too old.” 

“Dander’s awful smart,” said the girl with 
the knife. It was plain she wished to make 
Flo Leet feel comfortable. “We raised him 
by hand. The black hen that hatched him 


INTRODUCING THE HEROINE 7 

tried to kill him, and we kept him in a box 
full of cotton batting nights and in his own 
little pen daytimes. It was great fun. He 
knows his name. I don’t feel right to have 
him killed, but mamma says he’s tough, and 
we’ve just got to have something for Grand- 
aunt.” , 

Josephine wriggled down to the street. 
“Where are you going? You haven’t told,” 
she said. 

“Up to the cemetery. We’ll find some nice 
flat tombstone where his head will lay nice. 
We tried a stump but it hurt him,” explained 
the girl who was carrying him. 

“I’ll go along,” said Josephine. “I’ve noth- 
ing to do this morning but to play with Vir- 
ginia Carter. I’d as lief go as not.” 


CHAPTER II 

THE TRAGEDY OF “DANDER” 

HE walk to the Ferndale cemetery proved 



A to be very long and dusty, but Joseph- 
ine’s attention was beguiled by her compan- 
ions. Jerusha Brierly, the girl carrying 
Dander, declared the cemetery the most inter- 
esting place in town. “There’s little winter- 
greens by now, and squawberries in the wild 
places, and there’s sassafras, and sarsaparilla, 
and crinkleroot, and groundnuts, and beauti- 
ful flowers,” she said. “It’s too late for the 
most beautiful of all, the trailing arbutus, but 
there’s blue vetch, and columbine, and ferns 
a plenty, and like enough lady-slippers.” 

“And ants’ nests as big as cart-wheels,” 
warned the pretty Flo Leet, looking about 
nervously and careful always that no clutching 
briar caught into the embroidery of her blue 
dress. “There’s big black ants, and ants that 
are half red and half black, and you step on 
their nests and they’ll bite you.” 

“But you don’t have to step on their nests,” 
argued the girl with the basket and knife, 
who had explained that her name was Fidelia 


THE TRAGEDY OF “DANDER’’ 9 

Maria, after the important grandaunt, whose 
“difficulty” demanded the sacrifice of Dander. 
“Most everything hates being stepped on.” 

“Well, you may step on an ants’ nest afore 
you know it,” persisted the nervous Flo Leet, 
“with huckleberry bushes everywhere, and big 
ferns. I don’t see why God made ants.” 

“Your not seeing don’t prove they’re not 
good for something,” reproved Jerusha. 
“Mother’s told us lots about ’em. They’re 
wise, if they are so tiny.” 

“Size hasn’t anything to do with wisdom. 
There’s Joe Dodson bigger’n father, an’ don’t 
know anything,” said Fidelia Maria. 

The cemetery was a spacious place, and only 
a small part of it was occupied by graves. 
Masses of blue vetch and white spurge, with 
here and there a spike of scarlet columbine, 
swayed under the spreading pines and beeches. 
Dander was set upon his feet, and at once 
began reveling in bugs and toothsome green 
things. He would come when called, the girls 
declared. Jerusha speedily found a large 
white tombstone lying flat on a brick founda- 
tion, and just the place to convert him into 
meat. “But before that sacrifice, we’ll get 
good an’ ready,” she said. In the basket that Fi- 
delia Maria carried, neatly wrapped in white 
cloth, were a few slices of bread and butter, 


lo JOSEPHINE 

some cookies and three russet apples. These 
viands were set forth, and Josephine was in- 
vited to share. 

^‘We know about you,” said Jerusha. “Your 
father. Dr. Dobard, ’s been way off in the West 
with th’ regular army.” 

“Both of my fathers have,” corrected 
Josephine. 

“Our father volunteered,” said Fidelia 
proudly. “Mamma and Grandaunt say he 
ought to have been made Captain right away 
instead of waiting for Mr. John Biles to be 
killed. Prob’ly he’ll go to Congress after the 
war is over.” 

“He’s jus’ as liable to be killed as Captain 
Biles was, Fidy Brierly,” chided Flo Leet. 
“The war isn’t fit yet, by a good deal.” 

“No, it isn’t,” assented Jerusha sadly, “but ’s 
you haven’t anybody in it, you aint called to 
talk.” 

After the slight lunch was disposed of, Jo- 
sephine was made acquainted with a long list 
of new plants. A tall sassafras bush was 
found, and all pulling together, and tumbling 
down in a heap together, they secured a long 
pungent root. Then there were long strings of 
sarsaparilla, and spicy white stems of crinkle- 
root, and rose-flushed, keen-tasting young 
wintergreens, with now and then mounds 


II 


THE TRAGEDY OF ^^DANDER’’ 

dotted with scarlet berries of the partridge 
vine. It was all so interesting that the whistle 
of the great woolen factory at noon surprised 
them at least a mile from the gate. 

throat’s all burning up, I’m that 
thirsty,” complained Flo Leet. 

^‘Me too,” said Josephine, “and my head 
aches. I’m going straight back.” 

“You’d better wait for us,” cautioned Fidelia 
Maria. “You might get lost. Rusha kind o’ 
jus’ knows th’ way. She’ll call Dander, an’ 
we’ll all go.” Long and repeated calls 
at last brought the exploring victim, who 
meekly allowed himself to be gathered up by 
Jerusha. 

“If I should buy him, you could buy meat 
with the money, couldn’t you?” said Josephine, 
after following Fidelia for some moments in 
silence. 

“Why yes, but mother didn’t tell us to sell 
him, but to get him killed,” said Jerusha. 
“She thought we’d like enough meet some o’ 
th’ boys. You always do when you don’t want 
’em. She kind o’ ’spected we’d get some one 
o’ ’em to get his head off, I think.” 

“Yes, I think that’s what she thought,” de- 
clared Fidelia Maria. “I took this knife my- 
self. I’m going to be a doctor when I grow 
up, and I may have to cut off legs, like Dr. 


12 JOSEPHINE 

Pardee cut off Lathrop Biles’ left one. But 
I don’t hanker to scrunch off Dander’s 
head.” 

^There’s money in my green frog bank,” 
said Josephine, “and Saunders won’t mind an- 
other rooster, certainly not such a clever one as 
Dander.” 

So the Brierly girls passed by all the con- 
venient flat tombstones, and went out of the 
gate just as they had entered it, but at the foot 
of the hill, where a low stone house was shut 
in by a low stone wall overhung with clematis 
and bittersweet, they paused. In the corner 
was a tall pole curiously set in a tall post and 
having a large bucket at one end. 

“There’s a well,” said Jerusha, “and I’ll get 
us some water, if you’ll take Dander,” and 
turning to Josephine, who was nearest, she 
deposited the rooster in her arms. 

In an instant the rooster, seeing the twinkle 
of the gold ring on Josephine’s left hand, made 
a dab at it. His sharp beak went to the 
bone, and Josephine, angry and frightened, 
caught his head in her right hand, and by a 
sudden quick turn broke his neck. Not know- 
ing what she had done, she dropped him, while 
her finger bled profusely. 

“It may kill you,” said Flo Leet, her eyes 
shining with excitement. “Old lady Putrell’s 


THE TRAGEDY OF ^^DANDER” 13 

parrot bit her, and her hand swelled up, and 
she died.” 

‘‘Fiddle!” exclaimed the startled Jerusha. 
“Dander’s no parrot.” 

It was not until she had carefully bathed 
the wound in cold water, and wrapped Joseph- 
ine’s finger in a perfectly clean handkerchief, 
that Jerusha discovered that Dander, who had 
flopped about in the grass, now lay quite still. 

“Why!” she exclaimed, “he’s dead. Seel he 
just lays there!” 

“Now see what you’ve done!” cried Flo 
Leet, wagging her blond head and capering 
about. “My mother’d never let me kill a 
rooster. She’d punish me for being so unlady- 
like.” 

Josephine’s dark eyes grew large, and her 
cheeks white. “I didn’t do anything but poke 
him because he bit at me,” she said slowly. 
“If he’s dead, he did it himself. As for you, 
you’re unladylike enough if you don’t kill 
roosters. There’s more’n one way o’ being 
horrid.” 

Fortunately something happened just here. 
A light, one-seated wagon rattled around the 
corner, and the driver pulled up his two 
powerful bays abruptly, while the young man 
beside him sprang out. “Laws-a-massy, I tole 
Miss Dobard if you were with th’ Brierlys you 


14 JOSEPHINE 

were all right!” he exclaimed. ^‘But she’s been 
in a dreadful swifit ever since she missed you. 
I do guess you’d better not run away no more.” 

didn’t run away, Abel. I just went,” 
corrected Josephine. 

“Well, you hop into Mr. Biles’s democrat, 
and we’ll quiet your grandma’s mind,” 
chuckled Abel. “Adam, he’s gone th’ other 
way. Ann Mary asked all around who’d seen 
you an’ at last she found out ’t Louisa Cliff ’d 
seen you along o’ the Brierlys an’ Flo Leet 
a-goin’ down Academy street, an’ I sez, they’ve 
started for th’ buryin’-ground. But Adam, he 
sez, like’s not for th’ river road, an’ he hitched 
Foxy an’ Whitefoot to th’ buggy an’ started.” 

“There’s nothin’ down th’ river road,” com- 
mented Jerusha Brierly. 

“You’ll git to ’Swigo if you keep on it long 
enough,” said the young man Abel, as he 
swung Josephine up over the wheel; then turn- 
ing to the three little girls, he added, “There’s 
room for you at the back if you wish.” 

“That girl can’t ride,” said Josephine, point- 
ing her unwrapped hand at Flo Leet. “She 
says I killed Dander.” 

“Sho!” exclaimed the mystified Abel. 

“He’s dead’s anything,” retorted Flo. “He 
bit her, and she hit his head so he only flopped 
once or twice.” 


THE TRAGEDY OF ^‘DANDER’’ 15 

^‘We’d as soon walk. Thank you just the 
same,” said Jerusha. She had gathered up 
Dander. His shining white feathers over- 
flowed the worn sleeves of her drab delaine 
frock. 

“I’ll be switched!” ejaculated the lean driver 
as he dropped the reins down upon the bays’ 
backs and they sprang into a swift trot. “Wish 
you’d tell me just how you hit that there 
rooster to kill him so quick. Much as ever 
chickens’ll die for me, when I’ve chopped 
their heads off.” 

“She must ’a’ broke his neck,” said Abel. 

The bays covered the ground so quickly the 
Dobard house was in sight in a few moments. 
Its yellow chimneys made the lean man 
straighten himself. He had dropped his neck 
into his coat collar and sunk, so to speak, 
into himself after the manner of a turtle. “ ’F 
I was you, I wouldn’t traipse off in woods even 
with them Brierly girls,” he began, turning to 
Josephine. “ ’Taint just exactly safe.” 

“Papa said there are no Indians around 
here,” replied Josephine. 

“Now an’ then there’s them as is as bad, or 
wuss,” said the man. 

“Can boys go around and traipse, as you call 
it?” persisted Josephine. 

“Boys is different,” replied the man. 


CHAPTER III 

AN ARMY POST 

I T was June, 1862. News and men traveled 
more slowly then, than now. To Dr. Paul 
Dobard and Captain John Worden the history 
of the war was bewildering. The story of the 
fall of Fort Sumter, and the first battle of 
Bull Run, had reached the isolated fort in the 
far West, where the two were stationed, months 
after these events happened. Each had long 
before asked for retirement from service, and 
had received it. 

The close intimacy and friendship between 
them had begun in boyhood, when studying 
Latin and mathematics in the bare and often 
chill Ferndale Seminary, an institution which 
had, despite its plainness, an inspiring effect 
upon the young life thronging it. John 
Worden was from Pompey Hill, where his 
father was banker, postmaster, and the keeper 
of what was called “The Store,’’ or, as the 
sign above its door read, “Emporium of Gen- 
eral Merchandise.” 

But if John’s father was a trader, his 
father’s father had been an officer in the regu- 


AN ARMY POST 


17 

lar army, and had been made major-general 
for heroic conduct at the battle of Baltimore. 
By some secret of nature, John was like him 
in mind if not in body, and Postmaster Peter, 
his father, had small difficulty in getting him 
the appointment at West Point he coveted. 
Paul Dobard also resembled a grandfather, 
who had been a physician and surgeon of fame 
in his day. His father Joseph, president of 
the Ferndale Citizens’ Bank, and interested in 
what were described vaguely as “State Works,” 
had protested against his son’s desire to enter 
the army, after three years’ study in New York 
and two years spent in the hospitals of Paris 
and Vienna, but at last was persuaded to un- 
wind the necessary red tape to that end, and 
after a year at New Orleans, Dr. Dobard had 
joined his old friend at Post Klamas on the 
Columbia. 

Josephine’s first recollection was of roses, 
and of cloudlike peaks of azure and silver far 
up the blue sky. A lovely dark-eyed face was 
part of this picture, and a voice that sang, 
high, clear, hauntingly sweet. Mamma 
Worden, whose hair was as yellow as the 
barley the soldiers sowed for their horses, and 
whose neat braids shone like a crown on her 
beautiful head, always told Josephine the 
brown-eyed lady with the curls was her own 


i8 JOSEPHINE 

dear mother. That she rarely missed that 
mother, who had died when she was not yet 
four, was because Mamma Worden left her 
little to long for. Josephine, however, did 
miss companions of her own age. The few 
garrison children were much older, or mere 
babies, and so she filled her brief solitudes 
with an imaginary playmate of whom she 
never spoke, even to her father, to whom she 
confided even her most secret thoughts. “Vir- 
ginia Carter,” as Josephine named her, was 
always on call, and could be easily disposed of, 
so naturally she went “around the Horn” with 
Josephine, and became with her an inmate of 
Grandma Dobard’s spacious old mansion at 
Ferndale. 

On her fifth birthday Josephine began hav- 
ing regular lessons. She had learned to read 
and write without effort, and without being 
conscious that she was learning, just as she 
had learned to sew as part of the day’s pleasant 
play. But on the fifth birthday a small folding 
table, and a small chair brought all the 
way from Boston to Portland, and then to Post 
Klamas, were placed behind the small battered 
army safe in Dr. Dobard’s office, and every 
morning Josephine had lessons. Sometimes 
she memorized something from a book, often 
she labored over a task prepared by her father. 


AN ARMY POST 19 

A small window at her left gave her a good 
light. Beyond it, in a corner screened from 
the public by a curtain of blue print, hung 
“Corporal Murphy,” a person “who was only 
bones,” Josephine assured “Virginia Carter,” 
when a wandering breeze made the “Corporal” 
rattle. In life a very bad Indian, the Corporal 
had died from whiskey and exposure, and was 
now for the first time useful, for by means of 
his neatly-wired skeleton. Dr. Dobard was 
able to teach the enlisted men how to give aid 
to the injured. Post Klamas was no mere 
depot for soldiers and supplies where life went 
on easily and gaily. Along the rivers Indians 
watched with sullen eyes the white men they 
called “Bostons,” ever coming through the 
mountain passes from the East. Unlike the 
Hudson Bay people, the “Bostons” would cut 
away the forests, and plant grain and orchards. 
The beaver dams would be replaced by dams 
turning the wheels of factories and mills. 
Without the restraining fear of Fort Klamas, 
and its hawk-eyed Colonel, the red men would 
have met these pioneer state-makers with the 
tomahawk. From “Corporal Murphy” Jo- 
sephine learned the beautiful structure of her 
own plump little body, and to draw its bony 
framework. Captain Worden taught her the 
names of the planets and where to find them. 


20 JOSEPHINE 

and showed her the moons of Jupiter and the 
rings of Saturn through his fine field-glass. 
Mamma Worden taught her the use of water- 
colors, and by means of a tiny melodeon, the 
rudiments of music. She also told her many 
stories of the pretty village in which she grew 
up, a village of white houses with green blinds 
and flower gardens, and of historic interest. 
As for the Doctor, he described many cities 
overseas, and better yet the great planta- 
tion near New Orleans, where among roses 
and oleanders, one never-to-be-forgotten day, 
he had found her mother. But no one could 
tell her much of the matter she wanted to 
know about most, namely heaven, where it is 
and what it looks like. Even Mr. Knox, the 
missionary, who came up from Portland once 
a month, if possible, knew little more than 
“the fathers,” as Josephine called her own 
father and Captain Worden, yet he had been 
to the Holy Land and to Egypt; and Father 
Bogue, who also came once a month to say 
mass and counsel the Catholic troopers, and 
could tell you the Latin name of most every- 
thing, was no wiser. Mr. Knox, who fre- 
quently announced that he came from “th’ state 
o’ Maine,” knew more Bible stories than 
Mamma Worden, but when Josephine ques- 
tioned him, he replied frankly, “Heaven, dear 


AN ARMY POST 


21 


child, is not our concern. We have all we can 
do to attend to our duty here.” 

“But heaven is my concern. My very own 
mother is there,” protested Josephine. 

“And my Johnny’s mother is there,” replied 
Mr. Knox. 

“And you don’t know where it is?” 

“It is with God, and, dear child, we are 
now with God. We have to be ready when 
God orders. We are ready when we do our 
best, and are obedient.” 

“That makes being good solemn,” said 
Josephine. 

“But happy, too,” assented Mr. Knox. 

Father Bogue, when Josephine appealed to 
him, could add little, but he warned Josephine 
she must take care to be sorry for her sins. 

“But I don’t do sins,” she declared. “Except 
I often feel like doing ’em, like running away 
out of the reservation, and slapping Daphne 
when she pulls my hair when she brushes it. 
But I don’t do either. Indians might catch 
me, if I run off, and Daphne’s black. Mamma 
Worden says I must be a lady, and ladies are 
never unkind to servants.” 

“Just so, but anger is a sin,” said the rosy 
priest, his blue eyes twinkling. 

“If you have a good reason, and don’t say 
anything?” argued Josephine. But just then 


22 JOSEPHINE 

someone came to invite Father Bogue to 
luncheon, and Josephine took refuge behind 
the old army safe. She dropped her head into 
the circle of her arms spread upon the little 
table, and wept softly. ‘‘They don’t know,” 
she confided to the Corporal, and the ever- 
sympathetic “Virginia Carter.” “I want my 
own mother. She’s in heaven, they say, and 
she knows. But she don’t come back.” 

Good Mr. Knox, being a light stepper, had 
come into the Doctor’s office unnoted by the 
keen young ears behind the safe, guessed that for 
some reason Josephine was grieved, and paused 
a moment. Then, unable to think of any words 
that would comfort her, he retreated, and came 
back making all the noise possible. “I’ve got 
the pleasantest house in Portland for you and 
Mamma Worden,” he said. “You can move 
there any time.” 


CHAPTER IV 


JOSEPHINE GOES TO SCHOOL 

F or weeks Mamma Worden had not been 
going about in her usual quick, light 
way. Sergeant McTavish had contrived a 
lounge for her, and afternoons she rarely left it. 
That she might have more comforts, and gather 
strength for the long journey to the New York 
hills for which she pined, it had been decided 
that the little household should remove to 
Portland, then a small village. The bells 
tolling the passing of John Brown had not yet 
sent their echoes to the Pacific coast. After 
giving their government sixteen years of hon- 
orable service, there was no reason apparent, 
why Captain Worden and Doctor Dobard 
should not ask for discharge. The Captain 
was anxious about his wife. The Doctor 
wanted to place his hot-tempered, impulsive 
little Josephine in a good school. His half- 
sister was dead. His stepmother was growing 
old. The homestead in which she lived, and 
the great farms from which she drew her in- 
come, “would soon be his,” she wrote him. 


24 JOSEPHINE 

“and needed his attention.” He wished, too, 
to put himself again in touch with the world 
of his profession. The four, long one house- 
hold, were to go East together, taking with 
them old Cupid and his daughter Daphne, 
negroes who had come with Josephine’s 
mother from the Pavageau plantation on the 
lower Mississippi, and who considered them- 
selves as much Pavageau as Josephine herself. 

Directly after the removal to Portland, 
Josephine was placed in Madame Dardenne’s 
“Select School for Young People.” For two 
“long bits” (i2^ cents) a week, one could 
learn many things. Madame’s husband taught 
the pupils penmanship Wednesday afternoons, 
and dancing Friday afternoons. Beside teach- 
ing excellent French, Madame had classes in 
“all branches of polite learning,” as she as- 
sured her patrons. Out of school hours she 
taught the piano. Her touch was old- 
fashioned, being very staccato, but she taught 
her pupils with a care they appreciated later 
when other teachers revealed its value. At 
first glance her school seemed disorderly. 
Pupils might study aloud and talk to each 
other about their lessons. Anyone daring to 
talk of any other matters was instantly de- 
tected and punished. One might sit anywhere. 
Josephine Was quite free to help Johnny Knox, 


JOSEPHINE GOES TO SCHOOL 25 

the missionary’s son, with his arithmetic and 
he might help her to put sentences into the 
droll frames or diagrams compelled by Clark’s 
grammar. It was Johnny who comforted 
Josephine when one afternoon she went home 
to find Mamma Worden had suddenly gone 
into the mysterious silence in which her own 
mother had disappeared. In vain Daphne had 
tried to quiet her sobbing after Dr. Dobard 
had told her as gently as possible the solemn 
fact. 

“She won’t come back!” she wailed, 
pounding the bole of a huge elm, obligingly 
near the back door. “They never do. I’ve 
prayed and prayed God to send back my own 
mamma, and she’s never come. She can’t, or 
if she does, I can’t see her. Why don’t we 
know more about heaven? You needn’t talk 
to me, Johnny Knox! Your father don’t know 
any more about heaven ’n anybody.” 

A red glow came under Johnny’s many 
freckles.! His snubby nose and outstanding ears 
turned crimson. Criticism of his father was 
unbearable. But he could not endure Joseph- 
ine’s tears. Anything happening to make her 
sad seemed far worse than any possible pain to 
himself. “There! there!” he comforted, dab- 
bing her cheeks with his grubby handkerchief. 
“Father’s always told me we know all that is 


26 JOSEPHINE 

necessary. You see we are in this world, and 
there’s sights o’ things to be done. An’ because 
we cannot see people is no sign they are gone 
forever an’ ever. There’s my half sister way 
off in th’ state o’ Maine — ” 

“But you can go an’ see her in boats an’ cars 
an’ wagons,” interrupted Josephine. 

“Yes, but see here. S’pose somebody said 
Jupiter has no moons ’cause he couldn’t see 
’em with his plain eyes like we’ve seen ’em 
through the Captain’s glass, an’ s’pose some- 
body said there’s no little creatures in water 
like we’ve seen through your father’s micro- 
scope, just ’cause he’d never seen water through 
such a glass!” Johnny paused a moment to 
take breath, then added gravely, “It’s awful 
foolish thinking what we haven’t seen, isn’t.” 

“Just us ourselves p’raps,” argued Josephine, 
“but all the people that ever was, and is, is 
different.” 

“Well, my father says when I’ve asked him 
about heaven, that my job is to be ready,” per- 
sisted Johnny. 

“That’s th’ way papa Captain talks to th’ 
enlisted men,” commented Josephine letting her 
apron drop from her swollen eyes an instant. 
“But that’s just another way o’ saying, ^Be 
good.’ ” 

“Yes,” assented Johnny, “I do s’pose ’tis.” 


JOSEPHINE GOES TO SCHOOL 27 

“Prob’ly then I’ll never get there.” Joseph- 
ine relapsed into her apron again. get 
mad’s fire, and I like to be lazy, and Father 
Bogue’s told me them is two deadly sins.” 

Johnny hitched away an inch or two, and 
looked at her wonderingly. “I thought girls 
didn’t feel that way,” he confided slowly. “I 
thought they were different. An’ anyhow 
Father Bogue’s nothing but a Catholic. My 
father never said a word to me about deadly 
sins, only just sins.” 

“You weren’t ever girls,” Josephine gave a 
convulsive sniff. Daphne had come out and 
besought her to be quiet for the sake of her 
papa Captain. “We may have it different, but 
we don’t have it easier, and as for Father 
Bogue and your father, they prob’ly know dif- 
ferent things an’ all of ’em may be true. 
Madame Dardenne knows things Mamma 
Worden never spoke of, or either of my 
fathers.” 

Old Cupid, who had been going about noise- 
lessly, gently serving everyone, all but 
chuckled. “Little Missy have th’ Pavageau 
mind,” he assured Daphne. It was the evening 
of that never-to-be-forgotten day that heart- 
shaking news came over the eastern mountains, 
news that brought peculiar pain to Dr. Dobard. 
He had planned to take Josephine first of all 


28 JOSEPHINE 

to her mother’s people. There were no very 
near kindred, for the beautiful Josephine 
Pavageau who had chosen to marry the young 
doctor at Fort Chalmette was an orphan with- 
out brothers or sisters. But there had been a 
host of uncles, aunts, and cousins, who would 
welcome and love Josephine’s Josephine. Now 
there was but one thing for the Captain and 
Doctor to do. 

One week after Mamma Worden had been 
laid at rest in the little burying-ground at 
Portland, the Captain, the Doctor, Josephine, 
and Cupid and Daphne were on board a slow 
freighter bound for Callao. When they ar- 
rived in Ferndale the balm o’ Gilead trees 
were opening their shining leaf buds, and the 
papers were full of the surrender of Natchez 
to Commodore Farragut. Like Cupid and 
Daphne, Josephine felt she had come into a 
very strange world. 


CHAPTER V 

'‘BEING A SAINT” 

’pears to me folks yere ain’t had no 

A raisin’. Dey sure aint much mannahs,” 
Cupid complained to Daphne, who at the mo- 
ment was tying Josephine’s white apron. “Dey 
is pintedly proud dey aint got no niggahs, but 
dey don’t treat niggahs as dey should be 
treated. Dey sure don’t.” 

“Who’s done things to you, Uncle Cupid?” 
Josephine demanded. 

“It don’t make no mattah. Missy,” replied 
the old man. 

“It does matter. You’re my people, you and 
Daphne, and I won’t have it.” 

“Law sakes, chile! don’t raise no ruckus 
’bout what a po’ ole man like me say,” pro- 
tested Cupid. “I aint no sort o’ ’count.” 

“But I riccolects ol’ Miss alius say folks as 
is mean to servants, an’ cruel to critters, is no 
possible ’count,” said Daphne. “Yo’ Gran’ma 
Pavageau, Honey, ’d ’siderate a hop-toad, an’ 
there wa’n’t no bettah quality de length o’ de 
ribber.” 

The high-shouldered Dobard house was set 


30 JOSEPHINE 

in the middle of a town block, and the space 
about it was walled in by an elaborate and 
tall wooden fence now rather the worse for 
age, and behind the fence was a barberry 
hedge. Over the carved, mahogany front door 
was a fan-shaped arrangement of French glass, 
and on each side of it were narrow windows, 
delicately etched. Over the wide stone steps was 
a high porch, with white lattices on either side 
that in June hung with garlands of roses and 
honeysuckle. At the west of the house was a 
fine group of Scotch larches. Beyond them was 
a great laburnum and near the corner were 
altheas and hawthorn. On the east was a 
formal garden. Little heart-shaped flower 
beds were set about a great round one in 
which was a fountain. A dolphin, bent 
sharply upon his tail, sent up a shining plume 
of water when a certain handle was turned. A 
barberry hedge stood between this garden and 
the kitchen garden at the back. On the other 
side a cedar hedge veiled the spacious drying 
green. All this land had once been kept with 
nice care, but Adam Saunders, who had looked 
after it more than forty years, was past sixty- 
five and swollen here and there with rheuma- 
tism, and Madame Dobard, past seventy, had 
not the energy to seek new help, or the patience 
to endure it, could it be obtained. So the 


BEING A SAINP 


Doctor found Adam and his wife in the small 
red cottage beside the barn, just where he had 
left them sixteen years before, and the fountain 
pool dry, the dolphin’s mouth full of dead 
leaves, and the small conservatory, that had 
been his father’s delight, given over to dust, 
spiders, and rusty watering pots, while the 
hedges and shrubs were in sad need of pruning. 

^^But it’s still the finest place in Ferndale,” 
old Adam bragged to Josephine when, with 
Janey, her favorite doll, she went out to see 
him, leaving Cupid and Daphne busy looking 
over dandelion greens in the outer kitchen. 
“They’s ’spensiver places, but that’s all you can 
say fur ’em. Our place looks like what it is, 
th’ home o’ nice folks.” 

Josephine nodded gravely over Janey’s red 
kid hood. She was accustomed to have grown 
people talk to her as if she were one of them- 
selves, and with an ever-hungry curiosity, had a 
strange habit of silence, which gave one the im- 
pression she understood everything said to her. 

^Terndale’s got all the sorts o’ folks they is,” 
went on Adam. He was setting out tomato 
plants, transferring them from a tin pan to a 
carefully prepared plot on the sunny side of 
the barn. “Jus’ north’s th’ Peter Biles house. 
He owns th’ four big mills by th’ bridge, an’ 
sings in th’ Wesly’n church. He makes th’ 


32 JOSEPHINE 

best flour they is, but as you may say he does it 
on th’ side. His ^chief end,’ as the catechism 
says, is abolishin’ slavery. All his boys an’ 
nephews is in th’ war. He says niggers is as 
much folks as anybody, an’ to prove it he has 
Washington Clay, th’ barber, up to sing along 
with his daughter Hannah, jus’ home from 
boardin’-school an’ pretty’s a pink, an’ talkin’ 
o’ goin’ on a mission some’eres.” 

“Mr. Saunders, have you been impolite to 
Cupid, or Daphne?” A sudden suspicion had 
made Josephine draw her pretty brows to- 
gether in a frown. 

“Me?” Old Adam spat contemptuously. 
“No, I aint been nawthin to ’em.” 

“Well, you better not be,” threatened Joseph- 
ine, “because they are my people, — and — and 
nice.” This was not the phrase she wanted, 
but all she could think of. 

Adam carefully set out three tomato plants 
before he spoke again. He had never heard 
slaves spoken of as “people,” and did not un- 
derstand what Josephine meant. “They’re 
pretty black,” he said grimly. 

“They didn’t make theirselves. God made 
’em. It’s God you’re finding fault with,” said 
Josephine quickly. “My Grandpapa Pavageau 
had more than nine hundred at Rosiere planta- 
tion, Uncle Cupid says, and there were as many 


BEING A SAINP 


more at the lower place where the sugar was 
made.” 

“Well, he must ’a’ had his work cut out for 
him lookin’ after ’em,” commented Adam, sud- 
denly surmising what “people” meant to 
Josephine. “Doc’ Pardee’d ought to ’a’ been 
born down there. His place is jus’ next us 
south. He says niggers is jus’ a shade better’n 
monkeys. He gits old Peter Biles hoppin’. 
But la! Every darkey ’n town’d run his legs 
off for th’ Doc. He looks after all on ’em for 
nothin’, an’ when wuthless Bill Fitch broke his 
leg he had him to his office, an’ took care on 
him ’s if he was th’ gov’nor. Th’ place on th’ 
corner opposite is th’ Dodsons’. I don’t p’sume 
your Grandma’ll crave to have you cultivate 
them, though old Dodson’s uncle to th’ father 
o’ the Brierly girls you run away with to th’ 
cim’try, rooster killin’.” 

Something, perhaps the thought of Dander’s 
execution, so tickled Adam he rocked back and 
forth on his heels for a moment, while Joseph- 
ine explained sharply that she did not run 
away, but just went, and had no intention of 
killing anything. 

“Well, well,” assented the old man sooth- 
ingly, “I wouldn’t agin ’f I was you. Th’ 
Brierly girls are ruther lawless. Th’ Dodsons 
are jus’s they are, an’ their pa’s mother was a 


34 JOSEPHINE 

Dodson. La! Walter sot out to be th’ town 
genius. One while he painted pictures, then 
he blowed a horn an’ sung in a trav’lin’ show. 
When he was home hei practised his voice back 
o’ th’ buryin’ ground an’ folks was scared 
thinkin’ some wild critter’d been in a circus, 
had got loose an’ was howlin’. Jus’ afore th’ 
war broke out he’d took to doctorin’ animals. 
His wife’s an awful nice woman, an’ has had 
an awful hard time, but you’ll git acquainted 
with plenty o’ little girls when you go to Miss 
Sadwell, an’ won’t ’specially need th’ Brierlys. 
I dunno’ but you’re some young though for 
Miss Sadwell.” 

“I’m goin’ on eleven since May,” Josephine 
frowned over Janey’s red hood, “an’ Madame 
Dardenne said I’m quick.” 

“Oh, quick!” Old Adam’s face drew into a 
disdainful smile. “Girls often are.” 

Josephine turned quite white, and her eyes 
blazed. Had Janey been Peg, her wooden 
doll, she would have been flung at Adam. As 
it was, all she could do was to stamp a slim 
foot, and cry angrily, “You, Mr. Saunders, 
you! — you’re a horrid old man!” 

Abel Ladd raised himself up from the onion 
bed which he had been industriously weeding. 
Old Adam was chuckling and rocking back 
and forth upon his heels. 


BEING A SAINT’ 


^^Come on ’round front till I show you where 
there’s a wren’s nest,” said Abel quietly. 
^‘That’s him singin’ now,” he added after a 
moment, during which the air thrilled with a 
brief but beautiful bird song. call him 
^Little Rapture.’ Don’t you think that name’s 
all right?” 

^‘Yes,” assented Josephine, “and I think, too, 
that Mr. Saunders is just what I said. I’d hate 
to be awful old, an’ bald, an’ wrinkled like 
him, an’ be so hateful.” 

“Well, if you don’t want to be hateful when 
you’re like Grandma Dobard, you’ve got to 
begin now,” said Abel gravely. “My mother’s 
always said ’t old folks can’t help doing’s 
they’ve been doing all their lives.” 

A lanky young fellow too tall for the over- 
alls and jumper he has wearing, Abel, in spite 
of his often careless speech, was unmistakably 
a gentleman. His mother was Grandma Do- 
bard’s second cousin, and he paid for his board 
working for old Adam, and also found time 
to take high grade in Latin, Greek and math- 
ematics in Ferndale Seminary. 

“My Mamma Worden used to say, Wou 
can’t do things when folks are not looking 
without running the risk of doing them when 
folks are looking,’” said Josephine thought- 
fully. 


36 JOSEPHINE 

^^No, you can’t,” assented Abel. “We’re all 
one piece. We get ourselves in habits. Saun- 
ders has let himself get th’ habit o’ pickin’, an’ 
you’re lettin’ yourself get th’ habit o’ flyin’ 
mad.” 

“But Mr. Saunders made me.” 

“Naw, — you let yourself.” Abel wagged his 
long head up and down, and his voice was very 
gentle. “You’ve got to get hold o’ that self 
o’ yours.” 

Josephine walked slowly over to the group 
of frilly larches. On the book-shelves of her 
pretty room she had found a shabby red book 
full of, to her, fascinating stories. “The Lives 
of the Saints” was the title, and the author was 
set down as “A Southern Gentleman.” “I’ll try 
being a saint,” she confided to Janey’s painted 
ear, and to the ever-present “Virginia Carter.” 
She had dragged a candle box from the barn 
out into the space in the center of the group of 
trees, also a small blue rocker she had found 
in the woodshed chamber. The candle box 
served as a locker, the rocker as a resting place. 

“Father Bogue was a missionary like those 
saints, and so was Mr. Knox, and they didn’t 
have nice times.” She had seated herself and 
had stretched out her legs. “But neither did 
th’ reg’lar saints. But Father Bogue and Mr. 
Knox live way off in Oregon, and th’ reg’lar 


BEING A SAINT” 


37 

saints lived ages ago. This is here, and now, 
and so, different.” Josephine was not quite 
sure that “Virginia” could understand this, so 
after a moment she added, “There aren’t any 
kings or queens to cut my head off, and 
Grandma and Ann Mary, and Abel, and 
even Mr. Saunders, aren’t like soldiers and 
Indians.” 

Josephine got through the rest of the day 
with little trouble, but the next morning, 
which was Sunday, saintship turned difficult. 
Grandma had wakened with a headache, and 
perhaps for that reason found fault with Jo- 
sephine’s clothes. For the most part the 
dresses had been contrived out of Mamma 
Worden’s old gowns, and were growing tight 
in the armholes, and short in the skirts, but 
Josephine had a curious love for them. They 
were part of the life she had left behind never 
to return, and when Sergeant Diderot’s sister 
had made them, they had called forth pleasant 
comment from all the little world of the post. 
Ferndale was, to be sure, four times larger 
than Portland, and Portland had seemed a city 
after Post Klamas, but these facts did not im- 
press Josephine. Daphne had selected as most 
suitable, a dress made from one of Josephine’s 
own mother’s wedding outfit, a silk of exquisite 
quality, in illusive shades of blue and silver. 


38 JOSEPHINE 

But it bunched at the waist, as no skirts 
bunched east of the Mississippi, in the year 
1862. 

declare, if you don’t look as if you had 
stepped out of the ark of Noah!” exclaimed 
Grandma, at sight of her. “And there isn’t 
time to change, if you have anything more like 
what’s what.” 

“It was made of my own mamma’s frock. 
Daphne told me,” replied Josephine pride- 
fully, “and I don’t care what’s what.” 

“You’ll have to learn to care,” Grandma 
spoke grimly, while taking a last look at her 
own reflection in the long mirror between the 
long windows of the front parlor. She made 
a handsome figure in rustling purple moire 
and an embroidered white crape shawl. Soft- 
ened by her own self-satisfaction, she added 
not unkindly, “And you’ll have to learn to con- 
trol your state of mind.” 

Josephine was about to retort, “I’m in the 
state of mind you put me in,” when recalling 
her resolution to try and be a saint, she was 
silent, and followed Grandma, who had 
taken Abel Ladd’s arm to go down the front 
steps. 

“You go before us,” commanded the old lady 
after a moment. Josephine obeyed, but at the 
next corner contrived to drop back that she 


BEING A SAINT 


might walk with Cupid and Daphne, who, she 
was discovering, were treated with an odd, 
chill dislike by the whole household. 

The old Orthodox pastor had died the year 
before, and a fiery young man was just now in 
his place. He had a weak lung, and was the 
only son of a widowed mother, or he would 
have been in the army. With all his untrained 
soul he wanted to help men and women to be 
good, and to that end he beat the pulpit cush- 
ions till clouds of twinkling dust came from 
them and set him coughing, and he kept at it 
till the hands of the round clock before him in 
the gallery pointed to twelve-thirty. Joseph- 
ine was not alone in her relief when the choir 
broke out as if in protest at what they had just 
heard, — 


“O Paradise, O Paradise! 

’Tis weary waiting here; 

I long to be where Jesus is, 

To feel, to see him near; 

Where loyal hearts and true 
Stand ever in the light. 

All rapture through and through. 

In God’s most holy sight.” 

^‘Well, Honey-bunch, how’d ye like th’ 
preachah?” asked Cupid as he polished his 
round face with a scarlet silk handkerchief. 


40 JOSEPHINE 

Josephine was walking near him, to make up 
as she could for his banishment with Daphne to 
a corner in the gallery. 

“He give me a poor opinion o’ God,” replied 
Josephine gravely. She was walking carefully 
on the irregular blocks of stone that made 
Ferndale wearing to shoe tips. “Mr. Knox 
used to tell me God is sorry for poor sin- 
ners, not angry all the time as this gentleman 
says.” 

“Don’t let nobody nur nuffin’ set ye against 
God, Honey. Dis yur preacher sure did make 
de spit fly, but he minded me o’ a green sim- 
mon. When de fros’ o’ trouble nip him, he’s 
gwine tur be wiser an’ sweeter, an’ he’s plain- 
hearted. He sure are pintedly strivin’ tur 
wuck fo’ de Lawd,” said Cupid earnestly. 

Meanwhile Grandma was talking to Abel. 
“Think o’ that hymn after that sermon on th’ 
justice of God!” she exclaimed. “It takes she 
that was Rhoda Biles to be contrary. If she 
aint as great an abolitionist as her father, on 
account o’ Philander Peck bein’ as he is, she’s 
a Biles.” 

“I love that hymn,” cut in Josephine, 
who had caught Grandma’s first sentence. 
“Mamma Worden used to sing it,” and pia- 
nissimo in a high, clear, sweet soprano like her 
own mother’s voice, she began singing, — 


BEING A SAINT’ 


41 


“Lord Jesus, King of Paradise, 

Oh, keep us in thy love. 

And guide us to that happy land 
Of perfect rest above ; 

Where loyal hearts, and true. 

Stand ever in the light. 

All rapture, through and through. 

In God’s most holy sight!” 

Abel Ladd caught his breath, and on 
Grandma’s face came a glow! of mingled pride 
and delight, while a little girl sprang up on a 
gate they were passing. She was a pretty crea- 
ture, with great dark eyes like stars, black 
curls, and a complexion of brownish yellow. 

^‘Who is that?” asked Josephine when they 
had passed to their own side of the street. 

“Nobody you’re liable to meet,” replied 
Grandma. 


CHAPTER VI 

BONNETS AND FROCKS 

^^T3AUL, that child must have new things 

A right away,” said Grandma. 

The family were at breakfast. Dr. Dobard 
had come back from the camp at Oswego 
where he had been a week, and Captain 
Worden had returned from a brief visit with 
relatives at Pompey Hill. Josephine sat be- 
tween them, and until this announcement by 
Grandma, had been enjoying herself. The 
old-fashioned dining-room looked out upon the 
flower beds and the waterless dolphin. Em- 
broidered white muslin curtains veiled the 
long French windows. The mahogany cup- 
boards in two corners twinkled with choice 
china, silver, and frost-like glass. A pale yel- 
low paper was on the walls. At intervals 
brown columns seemed to go from floor to 
ceiling, and between them hung garlands of 
roses. On either side of the fireplace were 
short windows with deep ledges. On one stood 
a tall rose-bush, now full of crimson flowers. 
In the other was a pink and white fuchsia, 
which Grandma called “lady’s ear-drop.” The 


BONNETS AND FROCKS 43 

flowers were indeed about the size of the gold 
ornaments Grandma wore in her delicate old 
ears, that Abel Ladd spoke of disrespectfully 
as “sinkers.” Over the mantel hung a smudgy 
but imposing portrait, which had a vivid 
quality of likeness, though it was plain the 
artist did not know all the secrets of his craft. 

Abel Ladd sat opposite Josephine. As he 
took most of the care of Grandma’s two fat 
horses, it was often pleasanter that he have one 
side of the table to himself. He did not resent 
it. He never resented anything, unless driven 
to, and then someone had an unpleasant time. 
Abel’s chief quality was interest. Nothing 
was too trivial or too remote to excite it. So 
he gave the same attention to Grandma’s re- 
mark about Josephine’s wardrobe he had given 
a few moments before to Captain Worden’s 
description of how the Indians catch salmon 
along the Columbia river. When Josephine 
promptly interposed before her father could 
speak, “I’ve plenty of clothes. Grandma,” Abel 
almost choked himself with sudden laughter 
and waffles. 

“You may have enough to cover you, but you 
haven’t anything proper,” said Grandma, 
frowning. “You look for all the world like a 
Dutch churn.” 

Josephine had never seen a Dutch churn, but 


44 JOSEPHINE 

she knew Grandma meant to be offensive. “I 
won’t have you calling the clothes Doddy-rot 
made me ugly names,” she cried, springing up. 

“I s’pose Doddy-rot was an Injun squaw,” 
sniffed Grandma, a flush rising in her delicate 
old cheeks. 

“Oh no,” said Dr. Dobard. He had put his 
arm about Josephine and was pressing her 
close to him. “Doddy-rot was sister to a 
sergeant, and her name was Diderot, which 
Josephine in babyhood made Doddy-rot. As 
for clothes, get what you think is necessary, 
mother.” 

“Sister Rose came down from the hill with 
me yesterday, and we bought some things for 
her Laura, and our Josephine,” said Captain 
Worden, rising and going into the wide hall. 
He returned with a parcel. “I chose the same 
fabric and figures for both, but in different 
colors.” Opening the package, he shook out 
first a glistening white cotton stuff sprinkled 
over with circles of pink leaves and flowers, 
then a soft thin wool of a rose tint. 

Josephine exclaimed with delight, and 
Grandma, after slipping on her glasses, de- 
clared them very nice. “You must have paid 
a pretty penny for ’em,” she continued, “and 
they are beautiful, but what I had in mind 
were school dresses of English calico, and a 


BONNETS AND FROCKS 45 

merino or two. Of course, too, she will need 
a flat.’’ 

“What’s a flat?” asked Josephine with 
interest. 

“Why, a hat for your head,” replied 
Grandma. 

“I don’t need one,” said Josephine with con- 
viction. “My silk bonnet’s nice enough for 
anything.” 

Drops of perspiration stood on Abel Ladd’s 
big nose, and he chuckled. Grandma bent re- 
proving hazel eyes upon him. Dress, in her 
opinion, is very important. It is part of one’s 
position, like living on a good street. She 
opened her prim little mouth, then closed it 
while a curious look came into her face. 

“Miss Vredder has some beautiful French 
braids,” she began. “You’d look real sweet in 
one, trimmed say with pink watered ribbon, 
and white daisies. For school you’ll need a 
leghorn.” Turning to the Doctor she added, 
“You must remember Martha Vredder. She’s 
keeping the best millinery store in town now, 
and is a perfectly awful copperhead. Folks 
wouldn’t patronize her if they could help it. 
She took on terribly because the Orthodox bell 
was tolled when they hung John Brown, and 
you mustn’t name Tom Von Zant to her, 
though she used to think her eyes of him. She 


46 JOSEPHINE 

says his marching with the Wide-Awakes and 
going off with the first volunteers is on account 
of “the dirty Biles blood” in him. Tom’s 
father, though he’s most forty-five, is talking 
of raising a company, an’ I do s’pose Martha’ll 
have spasms if he does. There isn’t any Biles 
about him/' 

“Fathers, am I to begin school right soon?” 
asked Josephine. 

“Yes. There’s no time to lose,” said Dr. 
Dobard. 

“Tom’s grandfather’s father was a distin- 
guished officer in the Mexican war,” observed 
Captain Worden. “I don’t like that phrase 
^dirty Biles blood.’ ” 

“And old Peter would have gone with his 
sons at President Lincoln’s first call, if the old 
General had not begun losing his mind,” said 
Abel Ladd, growing very red at the sound of 
his own voice. “And I heard Dr. Pardee say 
old Peter would have been in Congress had he 
not been such a rabid abolitionist.” 

“He’s more’n an abolitionist,” said Grandma, 
rising. “He’s — ^well, he hasn’t good sense.” 

A few minutes later Josephine slipped into 
the spacious closed parlor, and gazed at herself 
in the long mirror between the French win- 
dows at the front. She admitted to herself, 
she did look different from the little girls she 


BONNETS AND FROCKS 47 

had watched from the fence. Until now she 
had never heard of “fashions,” nor of the mys- 
terious “they” who order the garments one 
must wear to be well dressed. To be delicately 
clean, and whole, to tell the truth, to speak 
gently and kindly and correctly, and to obey 
the people one should obey, were the great 
matters in the world she had known. Of these 
great essentials she had never heard two opin- 
ions. But in Grandma’s world, and in a school 
full of girls, clothes might mean a great deal, 
as Grandma asserted. Looking carefully over 
the figure she saw, she could not determine in 
what way she differed from the girls she had 
seen. The frills of embroidery, just visible be- 
low her frock which ended at her knees, had 
been made by Mamma Worden. The lace in- 
side her sleeves had belonged to her own 
mother. She loved these belongings, come 
from her far-away and vanished home. But 
she wanted to look what Grandma had called, 
“sweet.” “But I’m ’fraid I’ll never be much 
of a saint here,” she confided to the mirror. 
“Even when she’s trying to be kind. Grandma 
makes me sudden angry. A saint wouldn’t feel 
so. She wouldn’t let herself mind. I might 
do better in a cell in that Walley of Worm- 
wood’ Father Bogue used to tell about. But 
p’raps I’d be myself even there. If flats’ll 


48 JOSEPHINE 

make me look sweet, I’ll have ’em. I’d like 
hoops, but Grandma says I’m too young. But 
Flo Leet has ’em, and other girls.” 

Remembering several matters about which 
she wanted information she went out to find 
“the fathers.” Both had gone to the post-office. 
Small towns had no mail delivery in 1862. 

“What are ‘Wide-Awakes’ and who was ‘old 
John Brown?’ ” she demanded when she came 
upon Adam Saunders and Abel Ladd in the 
barn. 

“The Wide-Awakes were a Republican 
marching club,” replied Abel promptly and 
mindful of Firefly’s heels, for he was rubbing 
down that sly and somewhat bad-tempered 
beast. 

“A marching club’t set th’ whole country 
a-marchin’ to their death,” growled Adam, and, 
rising, he hung the harness he had been greas- 
ing on a convenient nail. “A nice mess they’ve 
made, they an’ old John Brown.” 

“And who was ‘old John Brown?’ ” persisted 
Josephine. 

“A man who tried to rouse the negroes to 
rise and take their freedom,” said Abel Ladd. 

“A wicked lunatic who tried to get the ne- 
groes to murder their masters, yes an’ women 
an’ children,” corrected Saunders in a loud, 
stern voice. “Don’t anybody need try white- 


BONNETS AND FROCKS 


49 

washin’ John Brown to me! Th’ on’y kind 
thing you can think o’ him, is’t he was 
crazy.” 

The boy owning the wooden sword had his 
company out drilling. At this moment the 
little troop began singing. The tune was 
simple but compelling. The words also were 
simple, and repeated over and over. The high- 
pitched reedy voices pronounced them with al- 
most solemn earnestness, accenting the time: 

“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in th’ grave. 

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in th’ grave, 

But his soul goes marching on.” 

The chorus had a triumphant sweetness. 

“Glory, glory hallelujah. 

Glory, glory hallelujah. 

Glory, glory hallelujah. 

His soul goes marching on.” 

“Why does his soul go marching on?” asked 
Josephine. 

“Because the slaves must be free,” said Abel 
quietly. 

“An’ a pretty kettle o’ fish there’ll be,” 
rasped Saunders, whose mother was Nantucket- 
born, and had filled his childish ears with sea 
phrases. “There’s some of their freedom now, 
and what does it look like?” 


50 JOSEPHINE 

The old man stretched a rheumatic arm 
toward the street with an angry snort. 

A strange pair were passing. The man was 
very tall and very black. On his thick wool a 
worn silk hat was perched jauntily on one side. 
His thin black coat swung back from a lemon- 
colored vest. He twirled a slender cane. The 
young woman beside him was white, and very 
blonde. Her simple blue lawn dress height- 
ened her fairness. ^‘Take a good look,” com- 
manded Saunders harshly. “You’re growin’ 
up, an’ hist’ry’s happenin’. That’s Miss Han- 
nah Biles fresh from college, an’ th’ nigger’s 
Washington Clay, th’ barber. I will say he’d 
be a decent nigger’f old Peter Biles didn’t try 
to make a fool of him. He’d be at work this 
minute if Peter didn’t bait him up to sing with 
Miss Hannah. He sings in the choir along o’ 
Peter, an’ Hannah plays th’ organ. Old Peter’d 
call that ‘th’ rights o’ man,’ I s’pose.” 

“Miss Hannah trains Washington to please 
her father. He’s got a fine voice, that darkey,” 
interposed Abel, flushing. 

“Well, such as that don’t please me,” 
snapped Saunders. 

Josephine’s large, dark eyes opened wide. 
She watched the strange pair disappear in 
silence. After “the fathers” Daphne and 
Cupid stood close to her heart, and were part 


BONNETS AND FROCKS 51 

of life itself. But these two somehow vexed 
her as they had Saunders. Ferndale, she con- 
cluded, was a puzzling place, and living in it 
more difficult than in Portland, or Post 
Klamas. 


CHAPTER VII 

THE QUESTION OF EARRINGS 

can’t sew!” Grandma Dobard put 

A up slim old hands in protest. “Th’ 
women who had charge o’ you must ’a’ been 
terrible slack.” 

“They weren’t,” contradicted Josephine 
angrily. “ ’Sides, there was always Doddy-rot 
to sew me. Why should I sew myself? An’ 
now there’s Daphne.” 

“Dear me suzl” Grandma looked at Joseph- 
ine over her glasses in a way that made her 
seem four-eyed. “When I was your age I 
could do anything with a needle, except blind- 
stitching, and that, — ” she paused, perhaps to 
reflect upon the difficulties of this branch of 
the art the goddess of wisdom is said to have 
taught women, then added meekly, “I’ve never 
quite got hold of.” 

The tall mahogany clock in the corner ticked 
with solemn aggressiveness. Its “tick-tock” 
seemed to warn all hearers that time was flying 
with the speed of light. 

“Don’t trouble ’bout me.” Josephine’s anger 
vanished before Grandma’s confiding tone. 


THE QUESTION OF EARRINGS 53 

^T’ll never sew people. I wouldn’t like to. It 
gave Doddy-rot a bad back and pains in her 
side. An’s I told you, there’s Daphne.” 

Grandma opened her prim lips, then firmly 
closed them, just as she had innumerable times 
since Dr. Dobard and his daughter had 
plashed into the quiet in which she had 
drowsed for more than fifteen years. She told 
herself that the child of a Louisiana French 
mother, born and reared in the wilds of the 
West, could not be expected to know every- 
thing a Ferndale girl knew as a matter of 
course. But she was certain that a well- 
brought-up girl must be able to sew, and to 
sew well. Again she gazed over her spectacles, 
this time with authority. 

“I must trouble, my dear,” she said. ^^No 
matter how you may be situated, you will have 
to take stitches every now and then, to keep 
your wardrobe in proper repair. It’s what you 
don’t know, not what you know, that’ll stand 
in the way of your happiness. When I was 
your age I had made two quilts.” 

“But Grandma, I don’t want to make quilts 
as you did so long ago.” 

“You needn’t do just what I did,” Grandma 
conceded, “but you must learn hand sewing. 
No machine can rival it in beauty. You’ll sew 
as long as you live. I do, and I am seventy- 


54 JOSEPHINE 

two. And if you do not care to make a big 
quilt, you can make a small one for your doll’s 
bed. When you can sew well, I’ll give you 
some coral ear-drops I have.” 

Josephine had often eyed Grandma’s ears 
with keen displeasure. “The sinkers,” expen- 
sive affairs set with rubies, had so worn the 
delicate flesh that the holes through which the 
gold wires passed yawned. “I don’t want ear- 
drops,” she said firmly. “Mamma Worden 
didn’t have holes in her ears to hang things, 
nor Mrs. Dill, and Colonel Dill commanded.” 

A flush came into Grandma’s withered 
cheeks. Again her lips opened, then closed in 
the new self-control she was learning. From 
behind the glass doors of the tall mahogany 
bookcase she took a red book with gilt edges. 
The binding impressed Josephine. She was 
not familiar with red books having gilt-edged 
leaves. 

“See here!” The old lady opened the vol- 
ume to a beautiful face framed in curls. “This 
is the lady you are named for. She was an 
empress. I p’sume you’ll admit she knew what 
is proper.” 

Over the exquisite head swept a white 
ostrich plume. In the ears were jeweled rings. 
On the title-page was the legend, “The Life of 
the Empress Josephine.” 


THE QUESTION OF EARRINGS 55 

“I was named for my mamma, and she was 
named for her mamma. The fathers have both 
told me. I’m no relation to this book lady. 
She prob’ly wore earrings ’cause she liked 
’em. But I don’t. An’ I don’t like white 
feathers either.” 

“Land-o’-liberty!” snapped Grandma, at the 
end of her patience.' “Little girls should do as 
they are bidden. My ears were pierced afore 
I remember.” 

“Afore you remember!” echoed Josephine, 
to whom Grandma seemed to go back to the 
world’s beginnings. “It’s no wonder th’ holes 
are so big.” 

Perhaps it was fortunate that Dr. Dobard 
hurried in just at that moment to bid Joseph- 
ine good-bye for a day or two, then rushed 
away to catch the express for Oswego, where 
several thousand men were drilling. 

Josephine escaped to the back yard, where, 
as it was Saturday, Abel Ladd was weeding 
onions. 

“Would you like to see me wearing coral 
ear-drops?” she began. 

“No sir — eeel” replied Abel with emphasis 
and rubbing his big nose with a dirty finger. 
“I think earrings look like — ” He paused, 
for the word upon his lips was not just suit- 
able for Josephine to hear, he told himself, so 


56 JOSEPHINE 

he added after a second, — “like all possessed!’’ 

“Grandma says I’d look sweet in ’em.” 

“Sweet!” Abel gave a queer snort and 
swung back on his heels. He had been kneel- 
ing. “How do you think I’d look in ’em?” 

“Gentlemen don’t wear ’em, not white ones,” 
she replied. 

“Don’t they! Wait till you see some of the 
Canadian French on the flats. They wear just 
such little rings as Cupid does. They’ll tell 
you it’s for their eyes. La! There’s a woman 
near my home’t cures a stye by touching it 
with the tail of a black cat.” 

A slight sound made the two look up. A 
lanky figure in gray was passing. The skirt 
stopped at the knee, beneath which flopped 
gray trousers. 

“It’s Miss Salina Dodson,” explained Abel. 
“Don’t she look like Sam Hill!” 

“They are convenient clothes,” argued 
Josephine. 

“Well mebbe,” admitted Abel. “But how 
they look!” 

“P’raps it’s ’cause they are different. 
Grandma says everybody that does things dif- 
ferent’s queer, and their clothes are queer.” 

“Well, my objection is they are so humbly. 
Why anybody dressed like that’d be humbly.” 

“What is humble-ly?” 


THE QUESTION OF EARRINGS 57 

^‘Why, — unpleasant to look at. An’ say?” — 

^‘Say what?” 

“Promise you’ll not let your Grandma pierce 
your ears until th’ Doctor’s return. I’ll take 
you to th’ first good circus comes to town if 
you will.” 

“I’ll promise. But I don’t think Grandma’d 
let me go to the circus. I heard her say once 
ladies don’t go, an’ she’s always telling me to 
be a lady. She says it’s like playing th’ piano. 
You must begin early an’ practise all th’ time.” 

“I p’sume that’s right,” admitted Abel, “an’ 
p’raps it isn’t just right to go to circuses in 
war time.” 


CHAPTER VIII 

FIRST STITCHES 

O NE morning Grandma got out a half- 
worn sheet made of two lengths of yard- 
wide cloth sewed together overhand. This 
seam she carefully ripped apart, and after 
basting the outer edges together, she called 
Josephine, who had been practising the scales 
on the small piano in her bedroom. 

“With cotton cloth the price it is, a body 
should be thankful to have sheets to turn,” 
Grandma declared. “And they do last longer. 
Of course it’ll be tejus, but life’s full of tejus 
long jobs especially for women, an’ it’s just th’ 
thing for you to begin on.” 

“But I don’t want to begin,” protested 
Josephine. 

“Well, you’ll have to begin if you learn to 
sew.” 

“And it’s a very long seam,” Josephine 
frowned at the silver thimble and scissors 
Grandma had provided. 

“Stitch after stitch’ll do it, and it’s only two 
yards and three-quarters.” 

“Tick-tock! Tick-tock” went the tall clock. 


FIRST STITCHES 


59 

Ann Mary’s canary sang shrilly in the sunny 
kitchen. The south wind gently swayed the 
great laburnums and made a myriad dancing 
lights upon the lawn. Delicious scents came 
from the spikes of bloom in the hyacinth bed 
under the sitting-room windows. 

To Josephine, time had never snailed along 
as slowly as it snailed that golden morning. 
Forever seemed to have crawled by before she 
had set six inches of the ninety-nine before her 
with fairly regular stitches. 

“I thought you couldn’t sew!” exclaimed 
Grandma when her bright hazel eyes had 
glanced at the work through her ‘‘near to” 
glasses. 

“I can’t sew things, I never did.” 

“But this is sewing and not at all bad. You 
don’t pay enough attention to the basting. You 
rip out an inch and a half, and do it over. It 
won’t come out even if you don’t. And mind 
the basting. It keeps you where you belong.” 

The vein above Josephine’s left eye bulged 
with throbbing blood, as she bent over her 
task. Her fingers grew sticky as she impa- 
tiently picked out the stitches she had 
impatiently set. Grandma, in her pretty lilac 
lawn, her white lace cap with pink ribbons, 
and frilly muslin apron, seemed far away in 
some impossible calm of age. Her eyes stung 


6o JOSEPHINE 

with the tears that wanted to come. Her back 
felt as if a myriad ants were running over it. 
But by a great effort of will she compelled 
herself to carefully resew the two inches she 
had carefully ripped out. 

^‘You’re letting yourself get all het up over 
that,” commented Grandma, whose birdlike 
hazel eyes had not lost a turn of Josephine’s 
head or body. “As I said afore life’s full o’ 
tejus jobs, especially for women. Th’ quicker 
you learn to take ’em pleasant th’ better.” 

Josephine carefully folded the sheet, stuck her 
needle in it and left the room without replying. 

“Well I declare!” exclaimed Grandma to 
Ann Mary, who had come in, and had heard 
her last words. “I must say I don’t know what 
to do with that child.” 

“Don’t do nothin’,” counseled Ann Mary, 
regardless of grammar. She had been in the 
Dobard household so long she felt herself part 
of it and competent to give advice. “Sure she 
has to find herself, like a cat do in a strange 
place, an’ belave me, a soft paw’s best wid her. 
It’s raison an’ luvin’ll make her do things, not 
scoldin’ at all.” 

Out to the friendly larches Josephine had 
fled with her doll Janey, and there, face down, 
prone on the fragrant grass, she whispered her 
thoughts to Virginia Carter until she fell 


FIRST STITCHES 6i 

asleep. An hour later she was wakened by 
hearing Ann Mary calling her name. “I don’t 
like to have my name called out like that,” she 
confided to Virginia. “Mamma Worden al- 
ways sent Daphne after me.” Still drowsy, 
she deliberately lay down again, determined 
not to be beguiled into the house where long 
seams were lurking, waiting for her to slowly 
sew them “over and over.” She was almost 
asleep again when Cupid thrust his big head 
into the encircling shade. 

“My, my! Pud Hun, your papa Worden’s 
done gone disyur minute,” he cried. “We’s 
been a-callin’ an’ a-hootin’ ’round ev’ywhere, 
an’ — an’ you don’t answer, an’ you done loss 
you chance tur say good-bye to de Cap’n.” 

In vain Josephine ran swiftly to the gate. 
The carriage was rounding the corner, and in 
an instant vanished. She started to run after 
it, but Abel Ladd checked her. “It’s no use,” 
he said. “He’s just time to catch th’ train. 
He could not stop if he heard you.” 

“But I’ll not see him in ever so long!” 
wailed Josephine. 

“You may never see him again on earth,” 
replied Abel gravely. “He goes in obedience 
to a telegram. There’s been a terrible battle. 
They called everywhere, but you did not 
come.” 


62 JOSEPHINE 

didn’t understand. My mamma Worden 
always sent Daphne after me. I didn’t like 
having my name called out loud.” 

“In times like these folks drop frills.” Abel 
spoke gently, being troubled by Josephine’s 
tears. 

“Manners are not frills,” argued Josephine. 
“I never heard officer ladies shouting to their 
children. Never.” 

“Don’t make yourself vexed over nothings,” 
counseled Abel. “Ann Mary has a heart of 
gold, and she took the quickest way to find you. 
It is what is meant, not what is done, that 
should be thought of. The Doctor will be 
going next. Even I will go. I enlisted this 
afternoon.” 

“You did? Oh, Abel!” 

“Yes. As I told you there’s been a terrible 
battle, and a new call for men. I am seven- 
teen.” 

Josephine hurried into the house and sought 
out Daphne, who was carefully clear-starching 
a muslin for Grandma. “I feel as if the world 
were falling down. I want you to hold me,” 
she sobbed. “And I’m never going to put off 
anything again.” 


CHAPTER IX 

THE GIRL ON THE FENCE 

A RE you a black nigger Republican?” 

A I a what?” 

“A black nigger Republican?” 

Plainly the questioner meant to be offensive. 
She hung on the picket fence enclosing the 
board villa standing close to the street at the 
corner, from which one could see Miss Sad- 
well’s School for Young Ladies. Her hair 
curled in delicate honey-yellow spirals about 
her sallow little face, which was shaded by a 
sunbonnet of blue chambray. Her pale blue 
eyes were set close together over her sharp 
little nose. Her thin lips, parting in a taunting 
smile, showed crowding, snaggled teeth not too 
well kept. Her cloth boots were bright with 
patent leather trimmings and white stitching. 
Her short blue cashmere skirts billowed out 
over hoops. In her ears and on her fingers 
twinkled rings. Around her neck was a mas- 
sive gold chain from which hung a coral 
medallion. 

don’t know what you mean,” said Joseph- 
ine. She had come from her grandmother’s 


64 JOSEPHINE 

gate to peer at the, irregular brick house which 
Ann Mary, pointing from an upper hall win- 
dow, had said was Miss Sadwell’s school. She 
had also meant to ask this sharp-tongued little 
girl to come and visit with her in the shade of 
the larches. 

Sleeping on the ground and the shock of not 
seeing Captain Worden before his sudden de- 
parture had brought on a slight fever, which 
had kept her in bed two days, with Dr. Pardee 
and Daphne in attendance. Now, out for the 
first time, she wore a silk dressing-gown, cut 
down by the faithful “Doddy-rot” from a 
sumptuous garment of her mother’s. The 
shape was not unlike the modern kimona. But 
it looked odd in 1862. As the girl on the fence 
did not at once explain, Josephine added, ^^My 
fathers and Mamma Worden and all the nice 
people I know, never call black folks 
‘niggers.’ ” 

“Prob’ly all your folks are black nigger Re- 
publicans then,” replied the small bundle of 
malice on the fence. “My pa says, ‘niggers is 
niggers,’ an’ he wouldn’t be seen fighting for 
’em. That’s what the war is for. Jes’ niggers. 
He’s bought him a substitute if he’s drafted. 
An’ you haven’t two fathers. An’ your clothes 
make folks laugh.” 

“Folks can laugh if they want to, and I have 


THE GIRL ON THE FENCE 65 

two fathers!” Josephine stamped a slim slip- 
pered foot by way of emphasis. 

“Dear me!” interposed a kind, grave voice. 
“Dear, dear me!” It was the tall man wear- 
ing thick, square glasses, that Josephine had 
heard not long before from her perch on the 
fence post, and whom Mr. Peck had called 
“Elder Vandercook.” The little blonde girl 
in blue seemed beyond his consideration. He 
appeared to see only Josephine, as he con- 
tinued, “My dear little lady.” 

The next instant Rusha Brierly with her 
sisters came around the corner and surrounded 
Josephine. 

“My pa says your pa’s as poor’s Job’s 
turkey,” shrilled the small person on the fence 
at the new arrivals. “You think you’re great 
herbs, you do, but you aintl” 

“Never mind her,” counseled Rusha. “She 
isn’t worth spitting on.” Then, turning to Jo- 
sephine, added, “Why, her father keeps a canal 
grocery.” It was plain that a canal grocery 
was a very poor business indeed. 

“Children!” The old gentleman spread out 
his arms as if to shoo chickens. “You are 
spoiling a delightful morning.” 

The Brierlys turned and walked with Jo- 
sephine to her gate. “We’re going after wild 
strawberries,” Rusha explained. “We know a 


66 JOSEPHINE 

place where one can have them for the picking. 
Wish you’d come along.” 

^‘And we’re going to get dandelion blooms,” 
added Fidelia Maria. “Mother makes a kind 
of drink from them that she thinks’ll be good 
for Aunt’s ^difficulty.’ Say, you come along.” 

“No, no. I’ve been sick. It’s Grandma’s 
nap time too, but she wouldn’t let me if she 
were awake.” 

“I knew your own grandmother, my dear,” 
said the old gentleman when the Brierlys had 
gone, offering his hand in good-bye. “She was 
a beautiful woman.” 

“My own grandma!” echoed Josephine. 

“Am I the first one to tell you Madame 
Dobard is your step-grandmother?” Elder 
Vandercook was plainly very much distressed. 

“Yes. But I’ve not seen many people since 
I came to Ferndale,” said Josephine with un- 
conscious self-command. “But what are step 
people?” 

The old gentleman’s face flushed painfully. 
He fidgeted with his cane and cleared his 
throat some seconds before answering. “Your 
own grandmother died when your father was 
little more than a baby. After some years 
your grandfather married the lady you now 
call Grandma. And she is a very fine woman 
too,' I’m told.” 


THE GIRL ON THE FENCE 67 

‘^And you’re not to blame for being a step?” 

^^Dear me! No.” 

“I don’t think Grandma wants me to know 
she isn’t really truly. Only last night she told 
me I’m all she’s got ’cept father, and she’s all 
I’ve got ’cept my fathers.” 

^‘Just so. I hope soon you’ll have suitable 
child friends. When you grow older you’ll 
find no friends quite so dear.” 

“I’ve always Virginia,” said Josephine with 
dignity. 

“Ah!” The old gentleman nodded approv- 
ingly. “My wife and I live up the street a 
block. She is old like me, but we will be glad 
to have you come and see us.” 

“You’re not old,” protested Josephine. “Of 
course you’re not as new as I am, but you’re 
not old.” 

“Tut, tut! Yes, I be. Washington was presi- 
dent when I was born. I’m a Methodist 
preacher. I used to be a presiding elder. But 
I’m too old to move around. Luckily my wife 
has her parents’ home. We keep bees and 
chickens, and have a garden. Come and bring 
your friend Virginia with you.” 

“Thank you,” said Josephine, who had seen 
Daphne moving about the grounds and had 
slipped within the gate. “I’ll be sure to come, 
but I never can tell what Virginia’ll do.” 


68 JOSEPHINE 

^‘What’s a canal grocery?” demanded Jo- 
sephine when she was snuggled again in a 
softly-padded chair on the wide veranda, and 
Daphne had covered her feet with a rug. 

“I sure don’t know. Nobody ever spoke o’ 
such to me.” 

“It’s something makes you not worth spitting 
on,” explained Josephine. 

“It must be mons’ous low down den,” said 
Daphne, “an’ Honey Bug — ” 

“Yes, Daphne dear, — ” 

“I aint never heard any o’ my ladies talk dat 
away. Dat ^spittin’ business’ I mean.” 

An hour later Josephine sought out Saun- 
ders, who was making an ear-racking noise 
sharpening a saw. 

“A canal grocery!” he exclaimed in answer 
to her inquiry. “Well, if ever you see Mike 
Cliff’s place down by the locks you’ll know. 
I’ll never be a Universaler’s long’s there are 
Mike Cliffs.” 

“You haven’t ^splained the canal grocery, 
and what’s a Universaler?” 

“A canal grocer sells th’ poorest sort o’ 
groceries for th’ biggest price fur th’ best to 
canalers. He also sells the worst sort o’ rum,” 
explained Saunders as he rubbed the saw with 
an investigating thumb. “As for Universalers 
they pretend to believe there aint no hell. It 


THE GIRL ON THE FENCE 69 

aint reasonable to me. Th’ Mike Cliffs go 
some’ers when they die. If ever you see th’ 
Cliff place, an’ th’ old soaks lying on his ve- 
rander all black with flies, you’ll know what I 
can’t tell ye, though it aint decent you should 
even walk on the other side o’ th’ street. I 
pity th’ women folks belonging to such men. 
They can’t help themselves.” 

^Tf your father was a Mike Cliff, what 
would you do?” 

“You don’t pick your father.” Saunders 
drew a fearful screech from the saw with his 
file after announcing this fact. 

“Would it make you hateful?” 

“Like enough. More’n like enough.” 


CHAPTER X 

THE “school for YOUNG LADIES” 

M ISS SADWELL was short and square 
of figure, and had keen, dark eyes, a 
thin, straight nose, and shining iron-gray hair 
which she arranged in bandeaux on either side 
of her colorless cheeks. She was addicted to 
wearing plaids. In winter it was cashmere, 
in summer gingham, and somehow these angu- 
lar arrangements of color, in a mysterious way 
added to the severity of her dignified aspect. 
But when she smiled a pink flush rose in her 
face, and years dropped away from her, and 
when so minded she had a gentle way that put 
the shyest person at ease, so Josephine found 
it easy to answer all her examination questions 
in grammar, arithmetic, history and French. 
She was given a front desk with the younger 
scholars, among whom she was youngest, and 
made an excellent record her first week. Fri- 
day as school closed Miss Sadwell asked her 
if she would like a seat-mate. 

“Yes. I’d like Della Laprade. She sings 
beautifully.” 

“I have been thinking to give you Jerusha 


^^SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES’’ 71 

Brierly — ” Miss Sadwell’s face for an instant 
was unusually stern, then flushed pleasantly as 
she added, ‘‘She has a very superior mother, 
my dear.” It was plain she thought a superior 
mother a rare possession. 

“I want to know things,” announced Joseph- 
ine at the noon dinner. “But first I want to 
know about Della Laprade.” 

“Th’ sight o’ her folks ought to be enough,” 
said Grandma, waving a hand toward the long 
east windows through which, despite interven- 
ing bushes and fences, one could catch glimpses 
of odd figures moving about the lawn of the 
corner house opposite. 

“But you’re not to blame for your aunts or 
grandmother, or even your mamma,” protested 
Josephine. “You just have ’em without 
choosing.” 

Ann Mary, who was bringing in a large 
shortcake, nearly dropped it, because of 
laughter. 

“It should be enough for you that I do not 
appove of your being intimate . with her,” re- 
plied Grandma tartly, and frowning both at 
Josephine and Ann Mary. “L have my 
reasons.” 

“Folks says as how Delly’s terrible smart,” 
put in Ann Mary quite unabashed^, . 

“Laprade — ” Doctor Dobard turned toward 


72 JOSEPHINE 

Grandma. “I don’t recall the name. Who are 
they?” 

“It all happened after you left home, Paul. 
Della’s mother was Fannie Dodson.” 

“And the father?” 

“Was from Mississippi. Fannie met him at 
college. Old Dodson was a fanatic about the 
blacks, and he sent his girl to a college that 
admitted negroes. Fannie wanted to go to Mt. 
Holyoke, I’ll say that much for her. But her 
father’s nose was set that she go to Ohio. La- 
prade would pass for white, and folks said he 
was smart. Well, they came here married, but 
they had to leave that night. Your father 
and Dr. Pardee helped ’em off to Oswego and 
Canada. They would have been tarred and 
feathered, at least Laprade would. They went 
to England, and Laprade died there, and 
Fannie died just after she reached home with 
Della.” 

“A mob here in Ferndale! It seems im- 
possible.” 

“And it was a wicked one. We were afraid 
they would burn the Dodson place.” 

“Well! well! And father and Dr. Pardee 
two of the worst old pro-slavery men in the 
county!” 

“Yes, and the Doctor is yet, though his twin 
brother and his only son are with McClellan. 


“SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES” 73 

He talks worse than ever, and if he wasn’t the 
best doctor in th’ county something might hap- 
pen to him.” 

“And old Dodson?” 

“Living, and full of ’isms as ever. The last 
thing I knew of his making was a cough syrup 
of hemlock and wintergreen. It is very good. 
It stops tickling in your throat. He’s made 
elderberry wines for several years and has a 
great sale for them. One from the male berry 
is for men, and one from the female berry is 
for women — ” 

A burst of laughter from the Doctor inter- 
rupted Grandma, who gazed at him in irri- 
tated astonishment. “He makes a good deal of 
money,” she continued after a little. “He 
travels spring and fall to sell his wines and 
cordial, and I’m told the country folks all call 
him Dr. Dodson.” 

“What made you laugh, papa?” demanded 
Josephine. 

“At Doctor Dodson’s impossible botany. No 
plant or bush bears male and female berries.” 

“And there’s something else I want to 
know,” went on Josephine. “The women who 
washed for us at Post Klamas were not ladies 
like Mamma Worden and Mrs. Dill.” 

“No,” assented the Doctor. 

“The Brierly girls’ mamma has done wash- 


74 JOSEPHINE 

ings. I heard a girl saying she had afore 
school this morning. Her name is Ellen Joyce, 
and she lives over the river, and is going to sit 
with Flo Leet. She says she s’posed Miss Sad- 
well’s school was more ^selected,’ whatever that 
is, and when Laura Broderick asked her what 
she meant, she said she didn’t s’pose she’d have 
to rub elbows with washwomen’s girls. An’ 
then Bina Forrest, who, you know, is from 
near where my mamma came from and owns 
hundreds of black folks, or did, spoke up and 
said, ^If you mean th’ Brierly girls, I’d have 
you know there are none nicer, or smarter, or 
higher in their classes, and their mamma is a 
lady if she has done fine washing to help out.’ ” 

“Good for Bina!” exclaimed the Doctor. 

“And Miss Sadwell didn’t want me to have 
Della Laprade for a seat-mate, but Rusha 
Brierly.” 

“You wanted Della?” said Grandma sharply. 

“Yes. But I’m to have Rusha Brierly.” 

“Well! That will do very well. Mrs. 
Brierly is a beautiful woman.” 

“She’s wonderful pleasant,” said Josephine. 
“Her house is big and bare, but clean as any- 
thing, and she makes you want to stay and 
stay.” 

The door-bell rang imperiously. The Doc- 
tor answered it. Delicious scents floated in at 


^^SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES” 75 

the open windows, before which a great mass 
of roses were in bloom. Somewhere an oriole 
was calling to his mate. A strange peace was 
everywhere, a joyous calm full of flowers and 
song. 

“I don’t understand about Della yet,” said 
Josephine. 

“It’s not necessary you should,” said 
Grandma dryly. “Just you let her alone.” 

“Is that the portrait of my grandfather Do- 
bard?” Josephine pointed at the rather 
smudgy painting over the fireplace. 

“No, of his father, your great-grandfather, 
who lost his head not long before the French 
king lost his. Your grandfather secured this 
picture when he visited France in 1833. If he 
was French, he was a good man and a gentle- 
man.” 

“Well, I’m American — ” began Josephine, 
ruffled she knew not why by Grandma’s setting 
forth of her grandfather’s qualities. Just then 
her father entered holding a brownish-white 
envelope, and she ran to him, while Grandma 
rose in her place and stretched out her hands. 

“Yes,” he said, clasping Josephine in his 
arms. “It has come. I go in an hour. Try 
to deserve friends, my child. Study hard and 
take care of Grandma.” 

There was a brief confusion, and Josephine 


76 JOSEPHINE 

found herself standing alone at the gate. The 
great elms rustled with a soft murmur. No 
one was in sight. 

About ten days before, noting that Cupid 
and Daphne did not fit easily into Grandma 
Dobard’s household, the Doctor had estab- 
lished them in a tiny red house in a side street 
only a block away. War had brought new ac- 
tivities to Ferndale, and many new people. 
The two easily found work. About the red 
house was a spacious garden. It was to this 
place Josephine turned for comfort. ^‘My last 
father’s gone,” she wailed to Cupid, who was 
on his knees weeding onions. just have got 
to be with the folks I’ve known longest.” 

^‘My Honey Lamb!” exclaimed Daphne 
from the nearest window, and in a moment 
Josephine was established in the cushions of 
the big Boston rocker, where she sobbed un- 
restrainedly! until Daphne said, ‘T shorely wish 
you could holp me. Honey Bug. My fingers 
are too big to do de funny fixin’s of this baby 
chile’s dress I’m gittin’ up.” 

“Like enough I can,” said Josephine, wiping 
her eyes. “Let me try.” 

“I’m mighty anxious it look fine, case de 
baby chile’s gwine tur be laid out in it, an’ his 
papa’s to de wa’. ’Pears like it wur doin’ fo’ 
de soldiers, doin’ such as disyur.” 


“SCHOOL FOR YOUNG LADIES” 77 

“It is,” assented Josephine, deftly and 
quickly pulling the delicate lawn and lace into 
place under Daphne’s direction. 

“Holpin’ somebody balms yore heart. Honey 
Love,” said the wise and tender-hearted black 
woman as she resumed her work. “I pities 
folks as haint no wuk tur speak on, an’ can 
spen’ all dere time ’fleetin’ on dere own fret- 
ments an’ ’flictions. I do so.” 


CHAPTER XI 

GRANNY ward’s TULIPS 

^^^Y^OU’RE going to get a private reproof, 

A that’s what,” said Flo Leet at recess. 
“You’ve whispered a lot, and at first you 
studied aloud.” 

“We always talked about lessons at Madame 
Dardenne’s, and we studied as we pleased,” 
replied Josephine. “I’ve not whispered much 
since I understood we’re not to speak to each 
other about anything.” 

“Well, you done enough to get six demerits. 
That’s why Miss Sadwell told you to wait after 
school this afternoon,” said Flo Leet not un- 
kindly. “I think Miss Sadwell might consider 
how new you are. Why, if you get another six 
you’ll have to stand up before the whole school, 
and take a public reproof.” 

“And after that?” 

“Why, she writes to your* people how dread- 
ful you are, and your marks.” 

Fortunately it was pretty, gentle Mrs. 
Thorne who awaited Josephine in the prim 
parlor. Miss Sadwell’s aged mother was not 
well and needed attention, and as assistant 


GRANNY WARD’S TULIPS 79 

teacher, Mrs. Thorne sometimes administered 
‘‘private reproofs.” For a moment Josephine 
believed Flo Leet had been mistaken, for Mrs. 
Thorne began by praising her work in her 
classes. 

“You must have had excellent teaching,” she 
said. “I never had a pupil of your age quite 
your equal in arithmetic and grammar.” 

“I do not spell correctly always,” replied 
Josephine humbly. “I think of several ways 
if I stop to think at all.” 

“We all do that,” said the teacher, “and as 
for your demerits I’ve wondered about the 
schools you have attended.” 

“Madame Dardenne kept a good school. 
We learned. We had to. But we could talk 
to each other about lessons. Johnny Knox 
taught me as much about arithmetic as teacher 
herself.” 

“Johnny Knox!” exclaimed the teacher. 
“Why, I have a young half brother of that 
name. He is with my father in Oregon. 
Father is a missionary.” 

“Johnny’s father is a missionary. He used 
to come out to Post Klamas with Father 
Bogue, the priest.” 

In a moment Mrs. Thorne’s arms were about 
Josephine, and “the reproof” was forgotten. 
First Josephine had to tell all she knew of 


8o JOSEPHINE 

Johnny and his father. Then Mrs. Thorne 
explained her presence in Ferndale. The sud- 
den death of her husband had been followed 
by the death of her grandfather, with whom 
she had lived since childhood. The only rela- 
tives she had living were in Ferndale. Dr. 
Pardee was her son’s granduncle. She was 
stopping with cousins who lived in a low stone 
house by the burying-ground. There was a 
well with a sweep. There were many such “in 
th’ state o’ Maine” whence she came. Joseph- 
ine must come and see it. 

“I have. It is where I killed Dander,” said 
Josephine. 

“Dander?” 

“Yes. The Brierly girls had to make him 
into meat. He picked me, and I gave him a 
push that killed him.” 

“Ah — ” Mrs. Thorne suddenly recollected 
“the reproof.” “And my dear — ” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Do I understand that in the school you 
attended you could always whisper or even 
talk to other pupils about your lessons?” 

“Oh yes. Always.” 

“Well, it is against rules here. That is all I 
detained you for.” 

After this, during school sessions, Josephine 
was appealed to in vain for help in lessons. 


GRANNY WARD’S TULIPS 8i 

“Note passing is just the same as whispering,” 
she told the girls. “I’ll help you out of school, 
but not in. My fathers are not going to receive 
letters about my marks.” 

Her second week in school she began doing 
errands for old Granny Ward, whose spacious 
old house stood back among trees next Miss 
Sadwell. 

Granny Ward was bent like a letter C, and 
wore a cap and hypocrite* like Grandma Do- 
bard. She also carried a cane, which she 
pounded on her rotting veranda to attract at- 
tention. She chose a new messenger every 
summer, and having pleasant remembrances of 
Josephine’s father, her choice fell upon her. 
At sight of her, she would come nimbly out to 
the edge of her steps, and pounding with her 
cane would call, “Oh I say, little girl! you 
come here.” 

Josephine’s first errand was to Dr. Pardee’s 
office for some rhubarb. 


* Hypocrite — A false front worn by women with gray, or scanty 
hair. A cap of white or black lace went with the hypocrite, and 
the cap was ornamented, I think, by ribbons of a color to suit the 
wearer. I believe the fashion was in vogue in the ’40’s. My knowl- 
edge of the hypocite dates from 1885, when I had a neighbor, a 
Virginian born and reared, who wore one, also the cap. The 
hypocrite was a fine brown. Her own beautiful white hair shone 
through the black lace of the cap, making an incongruous whole. 
One day she took the hypocrite off forever, much to my delight and 
her own improvement in looks. My knowledge of hypocrites as 
worn in the ’6o’s is second hand, but reliable, since it was from 
my mother. 


82 JOSEPHINE 

trusting you with a dollar,” said the 
old lady. “He’ll charge twenty-five cents for 
what I want.” 

As Josephine did this errand satisfactorily 
no day passed that she did not do at least one. 
Oftener it was several. Meanwhile in 
Granny’s yard a myriad tulips came into 
bloom. They were everywhere as if growing 
wild, and there was every color and combina- 
tion of color, for Granny Ward’s husband had 
been a gardener and flower lover, and had 
spared no trouble to fill his yard with his 
favorites. Grandma Dobard had a row of 
hyacinths, and some bunches of daffodils, but 
no tulips. No one in Ferndale had such tulips 
as Granny Ward. One day Jerusha Brierly, 
peeping through the high fence, said longingly, 
“I wish I had a few for mother and Aunt 
Fidelia. Her difficulty isn’t any better.” 

“I’ll ask Granny for some,” said Josephine 
boldly. “I’ve been hankering for some 
myself.” 

“Better ask her after you’ve done one of her 
errands,” counseled Jerusha. “She’s — well, 
she’s curious, but right after you’ve done some- 
thing for her, she’d ought not to be as curious 
as she can be.” Jerusha’s home training for- 
bade her to tell the plain truth of any old 
resident, if the plain truth was not flattering. 


GRANNY WARD’S TULIPS 83 

That very afternoon Josephine had her 
chance. Granny commissioned her to buy ten 
cents’ worth of snuff at Peck’s drug store. It 
must be “Scotch” and scented with vanilla, and 
of the best quality. Josephine did this errand 
quickly and well. Granny never praised, but 
she had ways of showing satisfaction. Not 
finding fault was one, and tapping with her 
cane was another. She tapped this time, and 
emboldened, Josephine said, “Please, Mrs. 
Ward, may I pick some tulips for myself and 
Jerusha Brierly?” 

“Pick tulips!” shrilled the old lady. “Mercy 
to me! Pick my tulips! No. Certainly not. 
They aint to pick. They’re to look at.” 

Josephine turned away red hot with anger. 
Perhaps white hot would be the better word, 
for she longed to rush at the old lady and beat 
her. 

“I’m not surprised,” said Jerusha, who was 
waiting outside, well out of sight. “I never 
knew her to give any. But I thought you being 
new so, she might. She’s always been odd 
since I remember. Mother says Grandpa 
Ward’s death changed her, and that she is a 
poor old soul, and to be pitied.” 

“She needn’t be pitied if she does not want 
to be,” replied Josephine grimly. “Folks’d 
like her if she’d let ’em. I would.” 


84 JOSEPHINE 

s’pose she can’t help being herself,” said 
gentle Jerusha, who, as the oldest of three, 
had learned to think about the differences 
yawning between even sisters. “It seems to 
me you have to take yourself inside, as you are, 
just as you have to get along with yourself out- 
side. If I could choose, I’d have golden hair 
and blue eyes like Flo Leet.” 

That evening Josephine did something she 
has wondered at ever since. When it was 
growing dusk, she slipped out of the big front 
door, and down the street to Granny Ward’s 
gate, which opened for her without even one 
complaining creak. It was quite dark under 
the shrubs and bushes, but her keen young 
eyes could single out the tulips, which she 
picked with furious haste as long as she could 
see one. Then she ran home, crept upstairs, 
and was studying her lessons when Daphne 
came in to put her to bed. She would write 
about what she had done to “the fathers,” she 
decided, and she would never do another 
errand for Granny Ward. What she would 
do on the morrow was put out of her thoughts 
by Daphne’s complaints of Ferndale. 

“La, chile, they talks to me an’ papa’s if 
we’d ought o’ be mighty grateful tur be free. 
I tells ’em I alius have been free. But I onct 
had white folks b’langed to me, just as I 


GRANNY WARD’S TULIPS 85 

b’langed to them. Now, — o’ cose I b’langs to 
you, Honey Bug, but not jes’ th’ same.” 

“You do too!” contradicted Josephine, fling- 
ing her thin arms about her nurse. “You’ll 
always belong to me.” 

Morning and Ann Mary put the tulip- 
picking in a new light. Grandma had just 
come in when Ann Mary brought the coffee. 
“What do you think happened to old Granny 
Ward’s last night?” began the old servant. 
“My, but th’ old lady’s sent for Elder Vander- 
cook to pray with her, and Lawyer Pratt to fix 
her will. Ye see about every last tulip in her 
yard’s been broken off. They say th’ place is 
full of ’em. An’ she thinks it a sign she’s about 
to die.” 

“Some evil-disposed person did it, I sup- 
pose,” said Grandma wrathfully. “But I 
didn’t think Ferndale held anyone who’d try 
to spite Granny Ward.” 

Josephine made herself small behind her dish 
of porridge. Punishing an old, old lady for re- 
fusing her tulips seemed different at breakfast. 

“It was Captain Ward himself laid out th’ 
yard,” replied Ann Mary, “an’ well I remem- 
bers how proud she was, an’ givin’ flowers 
right an’ leJft when they came. Aye, all differ- 
ent from now. Ever since he dropped dead, 
she’s been touched in th’ head. He was 


86 JOSEPHINE 

brought home to her, poor soul, just when th’ 
tulips were a-blowin’. Hokum, her grandson, 
the candy man, he says he hopes them as did 
th’ mischief’ll be soundly punished. He 
sleeps there now. She don’t know it. But he 
does.” 

Not even to the discreet Virginia Carter 
did Josephine whisper of her doings in 
Granny’s yard. Memory of her act made her 
feel disgraced and ashamed, and after a really 
dreadful week, she was humbly thankful when 
the old lady tottered out on her quaking 
veranda, and with much cane pounding 
ordered her to again buy Scotch snuff. ^‘The 
fathers,” Josephine decided, had quite enough 
worries without reading about her mad fit, and 
how she tried to revenge herself. But she 
wrote in the red-covered diary her father had 
given her the day before he was called to 
Washington, the following: — 

“Hereafter I’m going to try not to become 
angry. And if I do, I am going to try not to 
do the things that seem right when the anger 
fit is on. You don’t see things as they are, and 
you may do things you would give worlds to 
undo, but cannot, and are afraid to tell of. I 
shall never be a saint. I shall do well to 
behave well enough not to be talked about. I 
mean talked about ugly.” 


CHAPTER XII 

NEW FRIENDS 

D uring the long summer vacation, 
Grandma Dobard contrived to keep Jo- 
sephine too busy to be lonesome. Every morn- 
ing there was sewing, embroidery, and piano 
practice. Afternoons when Grandma retired 
to her own room for a nap, and a very delib- 
erate toilet, Josephine was free to read any of 
the books with which the house abounded, or 
to play with her dolls beneath the weigelias or 
the larches. Sometimes she was allowed to spend 
an hour or two with Bina Forrest, who had 
been sent from her home in Georgia to her 
mother’s cousins, Mrs. Polluck Jones and Miss 
Vredder, to be cared for and educated until 
the war was over. Sometimes she went to see 
Flo Leet, who had all sorts of doll playthings 
and trinkets, but was oddly fussy, and always 
selfish. 

The Brierlys industriously painted sugar 
dolls, sugar apples, and sugar cats, dogs and 
birds. They also worked in their garden, and 
often went berrying and fishing, activities Jo- 
sephine was forbidden to share after returning 


88 JOSEPHINE 

blotched and stung from one. In vain she 
attempted argument with Grandma. ^‘You 
may go to another field, or to another place on 
Fay creek,” the old lady would reply, ^‘but 
you’ll find the same bugs.” Elderly, prim and 
watchful, Mrs. Leet was always present when 
she visited Flo. With Bina she was often 
alone, a fact Bina took advantage of to pour 
out her hopes and dreams for her own future, 
which she was sure would be brilliant. “Don’t 
you ever think of what you may be?” she once 
demanded impatiently of Josephine, who had 
never responded to these confidences. 

“Sometimes,” Josephine’s cheeks flushed, 
“but not often. What I’ll be, I’ve always been 
told, will depend upon what I do going along, 
and going along is wonderful interesting.” 

“You’re just a child,” declared Bina. 

“I’ll outgrow it,” replied Josephine, 
laughing. 

Without asking permission she went to see 
Dr. Vandercook, who brought out all his store 
of reading and fancies for her entertainment 
and instruction. Incidentally, he helped her 
conquer the few English words her tongue had 
thus far found impossible, and she no longer 
said, “nemassary, wingewer, and coocumbah.” 
She also became intimate with Mrs. Vander- 
cook, who talked to her quite as if she were 


NEW FRIENDS 89 

seventy instead of “going on eleven.” “You’d 
think husband’d be ready to go after our wan- 
dering life,” the old lady complained, “but 
he’d rather stay home than to visit Queen Vic- 
tory. I can’t drive him to visit the children 
even. To be sure Lucy’s huband is dreadful 
instructive, and Will-yum’s wife gits on my 
nerves she’s that anxious to be in style, but 
your children are your children. Th’ only 
time I got husband started, the cats died while 
we were gone. Since then whenever I talk about 
a little jaunt, he begins, ‘But there are th’ 
cats!’ I’ll admit Orlando’s tryin’, an’ Lily’s 
wearin’, an’ I don’t wonder husband says both 
on ’em’s busy with ‘bug-dust,’ but I’d like to 
visit Lucy an’ Will-yum just th’ same, ’stead o’ 
alius makin’ ’em come to see me. But husband 
says Miggsville, where Orlando’s professor o’ 
mental science in th’ college, ’s not nigh so 
pretty a town as Ferndale, and that East Rome 
aint to be spoke of in th’ same day, if Will- 
yum’s father-in-law is president of th’ village, 
an’ he says folks is turrible alike everywhere.” 

“They are,” asserted Josephine. “Anyway 
Portland and Ferndale folks are like.” 

“My suzzyl” exclaimed the old lady in 
astonishment. 

With stories from Homer and Euripides 
and mediaeval history, the Doctor mingled 


90 JOSEPHINE 

tales of his own adventures helping runaway- 
slaves. One recital was very exciting. He 
still bore scars of it upon his fine old head, 
for after helping a young black man to reach 
Canada, he had been set upon and beaten into 
unconsciousness by the baffled trackers. 

‘‘I reckon you went all around th’ South, so 
you know just how the white folks treated their 
black ones,” said Josephine thoughtfully, when 
she first heard the story. ‘^It s’prises me. 
Uncle Cupid and Aunt Daphne never told me 
it was like that at Grandma Pavageau’s.” 

“No.” The Doctor gave her a quick look. 
“I was never south o’ Painted Post. I’ve no 
doubt some masters were kind, but I’ve felt 
certain that when black folks took the chances 
of running away, I was in duty bound to help 
’em.” 

Another of Josephine’s elderly friends was 
Dr. Pardee. It may have been the familiar 
odor of drugs. It may have been the twinkle 
of his shrewd gray eyes. It is certain that one 
golden afternoon, longing for she knew not 
what, she walked in upon him quite as if it 
were customary for little girls to visit old doc- 
tors, when not compelled. He was sitting in 
his waiting-room reading the “Medical 
Record” when the slight sound she made 
entering caused him to glance up. 


NEW FRIENDS 91 

He smiled at her kindly over his 
spectacles. “Ah! Who’s sick?” 

“No one at our house. I just came in to see 
you.” 

“Thank you, my dear.” He sprang up and 
offered her a chair, a low one considerately 
provided for young patients. “It’s great fun 
having someone come in who does not want 
me to give her a powder or pill, and to ex- 
amine her tongue and feel her pulse.” 

“My papa Dobard’s a doctor.” 

Dr. Pardee nodded. 

“And with both my fathers gone to the war, 
and no school, sometimes Virginia and I get 
dull,” explained Josephine. 

Again the doctor nodded, and he did it in a 
way that showed he understood exactly how a 
little girl feels when she is lonely. 

“When there’s someone to talk to you, you 
do not always talk,” continued Josephine. 
“But if there’s no one, you get th’ fidgets think- 
ing of things you’d like to ask about, and then, 
there’s things you’d like to say. That is, you 
do when you are only ten going on eleven.” 

“Grown-ups are the same way,” assured the 
doctor. “It’s just our human contrariness.” 

“Dr. Vandercook said most that last week. 
I miss ’em, him especially. But just now they 
drive out to camp-meeting every day.” 


92 JOSEPHINE 

^‘So you know that old nigger-lover?” The 
doctor’s tone was sharp and tart. 

‘T don’t think he loves ’em,” said Josephine 
thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t let Mammy 
Daphne cook for him when Mrs. Vandercook 
had a swollen hand. He spoke like the black 
would rub off into the victuals. But he thinks 
they should do as they like, and he is good. 
He gives you a good opinion of God.” 

The doctor made an odd sound in his 
throat, but said nothing, and after a moment 
Josephine continued, “He never calls black 
folks ^niggers’ either, any more than my 
fathers, and he says you are a wonderful 
physician.” 

“Yaw!” snorted the doctor, rubbing his 
bristling jaws. 

“I like him better than the minister at 
Grandma’s church. He’s always telling us 
how angry God is with us.” 

“The good God no doubt has reason,” said 
the doctor very gently. 

Josephine also made friends with Jefferson 
Hokum, Granny Ward’s grandson, who kept 
the candy store which she had described to “the 
fathers” as “ ’round two corners.” He would 
have been one of the first to volunteer in re- 
sponse to the President’s first call, had he not 
been the sole support of his father, crippled 


NEW FRIENDS 


93 

with rheumatism, and also the secret guardian 
of his mother’s mother, Granny Ward, who, 
despite her more than eighty years, insisted 
upon living alone. Tall, with bright red curl- 
ing hair, bright blue eyes, many freckles, and 
a delightful smile which disclosed two rows of 
big white teeth, Jefferson kept his candy 
kitchen as neat as soap, sand and water could 
make it. All his candy was delicious, but 
there was a certain pale yellow compound 
flavored with vanilla, which was one of his 
own inventions, that Josephine found most 
fascinating. It was this dainty that began 
their acquaintance. 

^T’d like to marry a candy-maker,” she said 
frankly when she had watched him stir the 
bubbling syrup. She had followed him into 
his workroom unmindful of the sign “No Ad- 
mittance” over the door. “Of course it’s fine 
being in the regular army like my fathers. But 
when there’s a war it is easier to stay at home 
and make candy.” 

“I don’t stay at home because I want an easy 
job,” Jefferson replied, his face flushing while a 
deep line came between his brows. “I stay 
because of my duty.” 

“Well, candy-making is a sweet-smelling, 
clean business,” observed Josephine, intent 
upon her own thoughts, and quite unconscious 


94 JOSEPHINE 

of the wound she had given. “As I said afore, 
I’d like to marry a candy-man.” 

“P’raps I’d better wait for you to grow up,” 
he said after a minute, during which his frown 
vanished in a smile. 

“I wouldn’t lose a good chance if I were 
you,” cautioned Josephine. “I might change 
my mind.” 

Thereafter she came often, and as she never 
meddled, or brought another child with her, 
she was never kept out of the workroom. She 
would never accept the smallest gift of candy, 
and held herself in such a dignified way that Jef- 
ferson, who at first had addressed her as “Sis,” 
soon called her “Miss Dobard,” to her great 
secret satisfaction. It was he who argued her 
out of a burning desire to see a circus adver- 
tising two clowns. Grandma Dobard was 
willing Ann Mary should take Josephine to 
see the parade, and then to see the animals. 
But she was quite unwilling she should stay to 
the circus performance, which Flo Leet had 
assured her would be “simply great.” 

“It won’t amount to a hill o’ beans,” de- 
clared Jefferson convincingly. 

“How do you know?” demanded Josephine. 

“I’ve seen Van Humbum’s ‘Biggest Show 
on Earth,’ an’ that’s th’ best going, an’ that’s 
flat as stale beer.” 


NEW FRIENDS 


95 

“But I want to find things out for myself,” 
Josephine persisted. 

“Well, th’ Lord have mercy on ye, if you 
keep on o’ that mind,” said Jefiferson feelingly. 
“As for this Sam Todd’s Combination, if I had 
a little sister, I wouldn’t take her to see it. 
An’ what’s more if I thought it good for any- 
thing I’d take you myself an’ risk having your 
grandma bite my head off.” 

“You would?” exclaimed Josephine. 

“Yes, I would. It’s not a suitable place for 
you. Miss Dobard.” 

Feeling herself set apart to finer and higher 
rules of conduct than she had chosen for her- 
self, Josephine flushed, and was silent, and not 
once thereafter did she ask to go to a circus, 
but took what Grandma Dobard permitted. 


CHAPTER XIII 

DR. PARDEE’S SKELETON 

W HEN the sunshine peered into Joseph- 
ine’s bedroom, which it did directly it 
came over the edge of the sky, it saw garlands 
of pink roses swinging on gleaming white satin. 
Of course it was only paper, but that was the 
way the walls appeared. Curtains of em- 
broidered white muslin hung at the long win- 
dows, and were looped back on brass holders 
that shone like gold. There was a thick pink, 
white, green and brown carpet on the floor, 
and the rosewood bedstead was what is now 
known as “the Napoleon pattern,” but Grand- 
ma called it “a sofa bed.” There was a small 
rocker, and a set of carved shelves in one 
corner, of the same beautiful wood. An easy 
chair with wings at the side was upholstered 
in pink, white and green silk, and the cover of 
the small piano was embroidered in pink, 
white and green. The corner bookshelves Ann 
Mary called a “whatnot.” A stout godlet in 
dull bronze sat on the top shelf. He was, in 
fact, a valuable curio from China. Below him 
were books, an odd collection ranging from 


DR. PARDEE’S SKELETON 97 

Mrs. Sigourney’s poems to Plutarch, and a 
finely illustrated edition of Horace. A rare 
translation from a mediaeval French history of 
the lives of the saints had suggested to Joseph- 
ine that she too might be a saint. Full of the 
perfume of roses pressed within its pages by 
long-vanished, profaning hands, it was to her 
an entrancing book of which she never tired, 
and as the days ran by and convinced her she 
could never become a great saint, it yet in- 
spired her with a hope to become a useful 
small one, and though she admitted to Virginia 
Carter that trying to be a saint was “plain 
hard work,” the effort made her more self- 
restrained, more prompt, more kind. After 
reading one of the strange old stories. 
Grandma’s little scoldings did not seem un- 
reasonable, and even piano practice was easier. 

Madame Dardenne had taught her pupils 
that music is first of all an affair of the mind. 
Prof. Schimilfinig, Josephine’s new teacher, 
talked always of the fingers, and as he was a 
graduate of Leipsic, and an artist, he must be 
obeyed. “First and always one must strive to 
make the hand the servant of one’s will,” he 
would declare. Then he would give a lesson 
all scales or five-finger exercises to be played 
in every possible way, and every possible touch. 
Fortunately the small grand piano in Joseph- 


98 JOSEPHINE 

ine’s bedroom did not disturb Grandma, and 
though it had been Josephine’s grandmother’s, 
tuning made it sound musically, and one could 
practise as well upon its mother-of-pearl keys 
as upon the ivory of the grand square piano in 
the long parlor which was next Grandma’s 
bedroom. 

The young Aunt Helen, who had died at 
eighteen, was often in Josephine’s thoughts. 
She was always ready to go with Ann Mary 
to place flowers upon her narrow grave. 
Grandma went twice a year; the May day her 
child was born, and the November day she 
died. That she was the own mother of this 
vanished aunt, drew Josephine nearer to 
Grandma. 

“I’d enjoy having aunts,” Josephine confided 
to Ann Mary on one of the many cemetery 
visits. “My two mammas had only brothers.” 

“Your Aunt Helen’d have been on’y your 
half aunt,” explained matter-of-fact Ann 
Mary. 

“Well, I could think of the real half, 
couldn’t I?” protested Josephine. 

“Yes, darlint, an’ you’d ’a’ got on wid Miss 
Helen grand,” admitted Ann Mary. “She was 
sweet as grass pinks. She was that. Sweet to 
look at, an’ wid such a way! An’ dead most 
twinty year! ’Twas heart-scaldin’ sorror for 


DR. PARDEE’S SKELETON 99 

Herself, I c’n tell ye. She’s niver been th’ 
same since. Ye’d have got on fine wid Miss 
Helen, though to be sure you’ve not been 
raired up like she wid th’ bist av’ everything 
at hand, an’ in this world it’s what ye are, an’ 
not how ye come so, folks thinks on.” 

“Ann Mary, I’ve had nice mothers an’ 
fathers,” protested Josephine, much aggrieved. 
“If anything’s wrong with me, it’s just me my- 
self.” 

“It’s that away wid all of us,” said Ann 
Mary comfortably, “but wid tryin’, an’ God’s 
blessin’ I’m sure you’ll turn out a credit to 
Herself an’ all belangin’ to ye.” 

By Herself, Ann Mary always meant 
Grandma. 

As her lessons were always well prepared 
and her home was near, Josephine was often 
excused to study at home, after a few weeks. 
But when it rained she usually remained the 
half hour before noon, and so heard the physi- 
ology class recite while waiting the arrival of 
Hiram Berry with an umbrella. Hiram had 
taken Abel Ladd’s place and duties. 

As taught by Miss Sadwell, physiology 
seemed difficult. Especially was it difficult to 
draw the framework of the human body on the 
blackboard. Josephine had often amused her- 
self drawing the picture of “Corporal 


loo JOSEPHINE 

Murphy” for her papa Doctor, and she was 
quite sure she could make a fairly good sketch 
of a skeleton with her eyes shut. Of all Miss 
Sadwell’s class, Della Laprade was the most 
helpless. Clever Flo Leet was a close second, 
and Josephine watched the two with growing 
irritation when for three consecutive days rain 
came almost unheralded and kept her in school. 
For Josephine, Della had the charm of the for- 
bidden and unfortunate. She was gifted in 
some ways and very dull in others. She was 
disdained because of a father she had no part 
in choosing, but spite of her yellow skin, she 
was beautiful, and in her dullness she was so 
meek she was disarming. It was perhaps this 
quality that stirred Josephine into secretly 
taking her part and wishing she could help 
her, though she had obeyed Grandma’s com- 
mand and held herself aloof. It was this feel- 
ing that made her wriggle irritably as she 
watched Della slowly and clumsily trying to 
draw the bones of the hand from a picture in 
Cutter’s physiology. Suddenly the rain ceased 
and the sun shone out. Perhaps the brightness 
caused an idea to pop into Josephine’s head 
and sent her skipping up the street. 

A neat brick building. Dr. Pardee’s office 
stood flush with the street on the corner of his 
spacious lawn. A complex bouquet of smells 


DR. PARDEE’S SKELETON loi 

floated out of the door, as of a mingling of 
aloes, senna, camphor, rhubarb, ether and the 
like, though the place was always delicately 
clean and orderly. Off the white pharmacy 
was a large closet in which along with other 
matters was a neatly-wired skeleton hanging 
placidly on a stout hook. His name, the doctor 
had told Josephine, was Captain Kidd. 
Though he was not the historic Captain Kidd, 
he had “sailed.” But he had sailed the canal, 
and might have lived longer and been more 
useful, had he not visited too many canal 
groceries on his travels. 

Save for Nicodemus, the black cat that 
lived in the barn, and who had come for his 
noon meat, and a blue bottle fly buzzing down 
the south window on his back, the office was 
empty. Calling and receiving no response, 
Josephine opened the closet and drew aside 
Captain Kidd’s veiling curtain. With him to 
look at she was sure even Della Laprade could 
draw the bones of the hand. To her he was 
just bones, and bad bones at that. It did not 
occur to her there was anything intimate or 
private about him, and she was confident Dr. 
Pardee would lend him. To climb up and 
unhook him carefully was the work of a mo- 
ment. Once down he proved somewhat diffi- 
cult to manage, but at last she had him in her 


102 JOSEPHINE 

arms and started for Miss Sadwell’s at a brisk 
pace. Ferndale was not accustomed to seeing 
slim young misses carrying skeletons. Gideon, 
the mongrel mastiff at the Peter Biles place, 
growled, then barked at the top of his lungs, 
while the young Cliff terrier took the low 
fence at a leap, and yapped at Josephine’s 
heels. The town ^‘Emp’tins Man,” jogging by 
and ringing a small bell, brought his lean horse 
to a halt in wonder, ejaculating, “I jinks!” then 
struck him a smart blow that he might get to 
the post-office in time to tell what he had seen 
while the quarter of twelve mail was being 
distributed. 

Josephine intended asking permission to 
hang “the Captain” on the hook high up on 
the door of the large schoolroom. The class 
could easily from that vantage point see the 
beautiful arrangement of bones by which they 
walked and the delicate wonder of the hand. 
But our best-meant efforts often bring disap- 
pointment or worse. When Josephine after 
slow toil arrived at the door, the roomful of 
girls seemed to spring up and shriek simul- 
taneously, while Miss Sadwell, rising nimbly, 
interposed her square body before Josephine 
and her burden. 

“What does this mean?” she demanded 
sternly, and tapping Captain Kidd’s skull with 


DR. PARDEE’S SKELETON 103 

a slim, disapproving forefinger. “And what 
do you mean by this conduct?” 

“I thought they’d understand their bones if 
they could look him over,” faltered Josephine. 
“I learned mine that way on Corporal 
Murphy.” 

“I’m astonished!” exclaimed Miss Sadwell, 
who did not understand Josephine. “Yes, very 
much astonished. To whom does this — er — 
specimen belong?” 

“Dr. Pardee.” 

“And did he give you permission to bring 
it here?” 

“He wasn’t in, but — ” 

“Take it back instantly and put it where you 
found it. I am really very much astonished 
at you, Josephine. I must have a conversation 
with you after school.” 


CHAPTER XIV 

THE UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES 

T he habit of obedience was strong in Jo- 
sephine. She turned, but as she was very- 
angry, she went slowly. She wanted to throw 
Captain Kidd down the stairs, for somehow he 
seemed the cause of her punishment. The 
public reprimand and the order to stay after 
school meant marks, any number, Josephine 
did not dare to think how many. And Miss 
Sadwell had said she was “astonished” when 
Della Laprade had to admit she had herself 
written the excuse signed by her grandmother’s 
name, and which said she was detained at home 
by illness when she had run away and spent 
the time over the river in Granby. Miss Sad- 
well had been “astonished” when Jennie Kemp 
copied her composition from an old number of 
“The Ladies’ Repository,” and she had also 
been “astonished” when one of the big girls 
had been discovered in using a “pony,” and 
reading its translation of Virgil instead of labo- 
riously digging out the English equivalent for 
the Latin herself. 

“Astonishment” should be kept for really 


UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES 105 

wrong things, Josephine felt bitterly. She had 
meant only to assist. Of course the Cliff 
terrier again met her with excited yaps, and 
the Biles mastiff ran along inside the fence 
rumbling his disapproval. A part of the walk 
was of boards set crossway. The tread of many 
feet for many years had worn them. The sun, 
rain and snow had warped them. Just as they 
gave place to a pavement of irregular stones, 
round which grew tufts of grass, one of Jo- 
sephine’s new copper-toed shoes caught in a 
wide crack, and she fell upon the Captain, do- 
ing him some damage and bruising one of her 
own knees. One of the Captain’s bones struck 
her upper lip, making it bleed, and her right 
elbow, with which she had tried to protect him, 
twinged with needle-like pains. She was more 
and more angry and quite forgot about becom- 
ing a saint. Indeed she lay quite still, giving 
herself up to bitter thoughts and her aches, 
and wondering what she could do to let the 
whole world know how badly she had been 
treated, when she suddenly felt herself lifted 
up by gentle hands, and opening her eyes saw 
the kind, dark old face of the doctor bending 
over her with tenderest solicitude, though in 
his gray eyes there was laughter. 

“I’ll never again ’stonish Miss Sadwell,” she 
wailed, “an’ I didn’t think as how I might 


io6 JOSEPHINE 

spoil him. I learned my bones from th’ Cor- 
poral. Papa taught me all about them, and I 
thought the slow ones would see if they had a 
really truly skeling-ton afore ’em.” 

“Just so,” assented the doctor. “That’s rea- 
sonable, and it was kind of you to go after the 
Captain.” 

“But you didn’t say I might. I meddled 
with him,” sobbed Josephine, a great regret 
sweeping away her anger. “I’m afraid I’ve 
broken him.” 

“Well, never mind if you have. Let’s see 
about you first,” said the doctor, who had noted 
the blood on Josephine’s lips. 

“I deserve to be hurt, I s’pose,” said Joseph- 
ine, who still held fast to the Captain with her 
right arm, while she reached up with her left 
and clasped the doctor’s neck, and thrust her 
nose into his satin stock, while she added, sob- 
bing, “but the marks! They’ll hurt th’ fathers! 
They ’spected lots o’ me, th’ fathers did, an’ 
with them in th’ war, they’d ought to have 
their ’spectins.” 

“You come with me.” The doctor set Jo- 
sephine upon her feet, and took hold of the 
Captain. “I believe all this can be straightened 
out. But first things first, and the first thing 
is to attend to your cut lip.” 

It was not many steps to the office. In less 


UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES 107 

time than it can be told the scratch made by 
the Captain’s bones upon Josephine’s lip was 
carefully bathed, and drawn together with fine 
adhesive plaster. Then the Captain was hung 
up on his own nail, and the door shut upon 
him. While he busied himself, the doctor 
said kindly, “Generally, people not doctors like 
to be told when they are to see a skeleton. 
They seem to find them disagreeable when 
they come in unexpected.” 

“But they are interustin’,” argued Josephine, 
“that is, if you are studying about them, and 
they are real.” 

“Well, folks are not accustomed to see them.” 

“No.” 

“I think if you’d spoken to Miss Sadwell 
about it I might have brought the Captain, or 
the young ladies might have come here. They 
would not have minded him here,” and the 
doctor wrinkled up his nose in a noiseless 
laugh. 

“No. He fits in,” assented Josephine. “But 
they needn’t ’a’ screamed if they weren’t 
pleased. I guess Della fainted. It was dread- 
ful. And Miss Sadwell was awful. She said, 
T’m ’stonished!’ She says that when some girl 
has done something really wrong. And she re- 
proved me. That’s ten, and after school will be 
as many more.” 


io8 JOSEPHINE 

“My dear, I’ll see Miss Sadwell, who is a 
wise and good woman. I think when she 
knows what friends we are, she’ll understand 
your borrowing the Captain. Meanwhile tell 
me if you are friends with Bina Forrest.” 

“Yes, — that is, she’s friends with me,” ex- 
plained Josephine, digging at her eyes with her 
handkerchief. 

“Well, try to be friends with her. Her 
father was my cousin. Her uncles, all her 
close kin, are in the Confederate army.” 

“She’s rather hard to like,” said Josephine 
descriptively as one says, “It rains.” “And 
her people being Rebs is no reason for being 
friends with her.” 

“No,” admitted the doctor, “but in what 
way is she difficult to like?” 

“She’s forever bragging of her Southland, 
as if it were nicer’n anywhere. My own 
mamma was from the South, but — I get angry 
listening, and want to begin about my West- 
land, where I’ve been. I feel as if I’d bust 
with braggings sometimes when she’s going 
on.” 

“The South’s her home. She’s here only for 
safety and to go to school — ” 

“Well, if I were in a place to be safe, I’d be 
polite to it while I stayed. And the Westland 
was my home.” 


UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES 109 

‘‘True, but the East is not fighting the West. 
The North is fighting the South, and she is 
lonely.” 

“And I’m lonely for th’ great river, and th’ 
mountains, and mamma Worden, and th’ 
fathers. She talks as if there wasn’t anyone 
but her.” 

“I believe you are lonely, dear child.” The 
doctor pressed Josephine’s slim hands in 
his. “But be friends with Bina for my sake. 
I’ll see Miss Sadwell. It’ll never do for you 
to have marks because of Captain Kidd.” 

“If I ought to have ’em. I’ll take ’em,” de- 
clared Josephine. “Th’ fathers wouldn’t want 
me begged off, or dodging.” 

“I will just state the case to Miss Sadwell, 
and she will do as she thinks right,” said the 
doctor, and just then the noon bells and 
whistles sounded. 

After four o’clock dismissal Josephine re- 
mained in her seat. When they were alone 
Miss Sadwell said gravely, “Dr. Pardee has 
been to see me, and I understand how you felt 
free to do as you did. At the same time you 
should not have touched the skeleton without 
his permission, nor brought it here without 
mine.” 

Josephine was silent and Miss Sadwell con- 
tinued, “Had your own dear grandmother 


no JOSEPHINE 

lived, you might have understood things you 
have not yet been taught — ’’ 

“My now grandma does the best she can,” 
interposed Josephine warmly. “She’s not to 
blame for what I do.” 

“Of course not. But your own grandma was 
wise in all the small affairs of conduct. She 
was one of the most beautiful women I have 
ever known.” 

When she called a person “beautiful” Miss 
Sadwell meant far more than looks, she meant 
conduct, and attitude toward life and the 
world. But Josephine did not know that. 

“Ann Mary says she can remember when my 
now grandma was called the handsomest lady 
in the county,” she said loyally. “Me, I think 
her handsome now, spite of her hypocrite, and 
cap, and earrings.” 

“Dear child!” exclaimed Miss Sadwell. 
“You dear, dear child. She is handsome in 
spite of the hypocrite. But your own grand- 
mother had a beautiful way of meeting the 
world. The best wish I can make for you is 
that you may grow up to be like her.” 

“I’ll try,” Josephine had risen, feeling her- 
self dismissed. “Ann Mary says I’m only a 
little like the Dobards. But if you please. 
Miss Sadwell, I think my now grandma 
thinks I think her real, and not step. Please 


UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES in 

don’t tell her I know. You see, — she’s all I’ve 
got, and I’m all she’s got.” 

A flush came into Miss Sadwell’s waxen 
cheeks. “Did I tell you?” she cried. 

“Oh, no. Lots of others have,” replied Jose- 
phine easily. “I don’t know why. And I don’t 
want her to know.” 

Miss Sadwell came close to Josephine and 
put a hand on each small shoulder, while her 
keen dark eyes seemed to glow behind the tears 
filling them. “I believe my wish is to be ful- 
filled,” she said slowly, and then, to Josephine’s 
bewilderment, she who never kissed anyone, 
kissed her pupil on both cheeks. 


CHAPTER XV 

VOLUNTEERS AND OTHERS 

F or a time it looked as if Ferndale would 
escape a draft. A monster meeting was 
held in the park. The venerable Gerret Smith 
came from Peterborough and made an elo- 
quent speech. The Hutchinsons, three brothers 
and a sister, came and sang, and so much en- 
thusiasm was stirred up that many names went 
down on the roster. Grandma Dobard, like all 
the old residents, kept open house on that 
notable day, and also sent great pans of baked 
beans, hams, loaves of bread and jars of pickles 
to set forth on the long tables arranged under the 
park trees, and free to all visitors. But de- 
spite this effort, the number was not full, and 
even as Josephine was carrying Captain Kidd 
to Miss Sadwell’s school, news that a draft had 
been ordered was going up and down the 
streets, over fences, and across lots, paling 
faces, and making hearts beat. 

After the departure of Abel Ladd, his place 
was soon taken by a distant relative of Mrs. 
Saunders, Hiram Berry by name, a flat-faced, 
pimply young fellow who, hating his father’s 


VOLUNTEERS AND OTHERS 113 

farm, had come to town to find work he would 
have described as ^^genteel.’’ For lack of 
something better he condescended to help 
Saunders. Being no kin of the Dobards he 
took his meals with Saunders and his wife, and 
slept, as had Abel, in the barn. This he re- 
sented, and was prone to assert to anyone who 
would listen to him, “that he was good as 
anybody.” 

The draft excited him. He said it was 
“high-handed tyranny.” “ ’F a man wants to 
be a soldier, Fm willin’,” he said to Josephine. 
“But I object to bein’ took by th’ hair o’ th’ 
head, an’ driv’. Horace Greeley said, ‘Let the 
wayward sisters depart in peace.’ I say so, too. 
Let ’em depart, niggers an’ all, an’ good 
riddance!” 

“Let who depart?” demanded Josephine, 
frowning. 

“Why, th’ Southern states. With two gov’- 
ments there’d be more offices. It’d be a good 
thing.” 

“A body’d think you’re scared o’ th’ draft,” 
sneered Saunders, who had overheard the talk. 
“Ye’d nuf sight better volunteer. Ye’d get a 
big bounty, an’ could set up a shop when ye 
got back. Draft’s a-goin’ to cut close. This 
township haint such a turrible sight o’ men ’t’s 
available no more.” 


1 14 JOSEPHINE 

Sweat broke out on Hiram’s flat face. The 
Adam’s apple in his lean neck moved up and 
down like the valves in a pump. ^‘Ef I’d 
wanted to volunteer I’d ’a’ done it afore now,” 
he growled. “An’ I aint goin’ to be drafted 
neither, ef I know it.” 

“I guess you will be, ef your name’s took out 
th’ box,” nagged Saunders. “Can’t monkey 
with th’ United States.” 

“It’d be jus’ my luck.” Hiram grew pallid 
under the sweat. “I’ve always took things, 
some on ’em twice, an’ th’ colts all threw me, 
that’d be like lambs under my brother Sam.” 

Terrible news had drifted up from the South 
all summer. Battle followed battle, and a dis- 
couraging number of victories were claimed by 
the Confederates. Ferndale hummed like a 
hive. Old linen, even treasured heirlooms, 
hand-woven sheets and table-cloths were 
scraped into lint. No one with a scrap of 
patriotism ate a blackberry. All were care- 
fully gleaned and brewed into cordial for the 
Sanitary Commission. Every week or two 
some great church bell would toll the age of a 
Ferndale soldier mustered out by death. The 
old custom, long set aside, was revived for the 
nation’s heroes. Zekle Althouse, limping from 
a wound received at Vera Cruz, did the drum- 
ming on these occasions, and Simon Dodson, 


VOLUNTEERS AND OTHERS 115 

Della’s granduncle, also a Mexican war vet- 
eran, blew the bugle. Saunders, who thought 
organs sinful in church and always “roary,” 
and who never missed a chance to denounce 
the war, always hurried to the corner to see as 
well as hear these two perform “The Dead 
March.” He admitted to Josephine, who, 
when possible, always went with him, that the 
music “shook something deep in him, and 
brought creeps to his back.” Before the hearse 
was always carried the beautiful silk flag given 
the village by Dr. Pardee when he was its 
president. For lack of a safe public place it 
was still kept in the large closet off the doctor’s 
waiting-room. Some tart-minded gossip one 
day said, “Th’ old doc’ didn’t seem to half like 
getting out that flag for soldiers’ funerals” and 
directly the remark was quoted as fact, and 
flew about the streets like a burning wind, 
causing more than one of his old patients to 
call in the young doctor who drove about in a 
gig, and had put up a shining tin sign over the 
Hokum Candy Kitchen. 

As the winter snailed along, the awfulness 
and uncertainty of the struggle weighed more 
and more upon the little town until it came to 
be like fire on tender flesh to hear any criticism 
of the North or the government. The an- 
guished desire for peace was so intense that even 


ii6 JOSEPHINE 

silence was resented. So the war-hating, sweet- 
natured old doctor was called, with bitter re- 
sentment, “a copperhead,” and the same defil- 
ing name was given Caleb Shaw, who had 
inherited his politics as well as his pop eyes 
and grocery, and Zenas Peck, who had given 
his first vote to Fremont because he did not 
believe in permitting the extension of slavery, 
with many others. Even old Miss Vredder, 
though she could not vote, brought ill-will 
upon herself, by calling President Lincoln “a 
rail-splitter.” Turning these matters over and 
over in her mind Josephine concluded that as 
she knew no young “copperheads” the insulting 
name was reserved for elderly or old people, 
and belonged among the sad burdens laid upon 
them, as dim sight, rheumatism, scant hair and 
the like. For this reason she became more and 
more attentive to the lonely doctor and never 
spoke of the war to him save when she read 
him extracts from the “fathers’ ” letters. At 
last came the terrible battle of Murfreesboro, 
and desolation was in more than one home of 
Ferndale. Old Peter Biles sat dry-eyed and 
silent when they told him his two sons. Major 
Hancock Biles and Lieutenant Wayne Biles, 
were dead, and his youngest and only remain- 
ing son was reported missing. It was not till 
he saw Washington Clay trying to make him- 


VOLUNTEERS AND OTHERS 117 

self useful in some foolish way about the house, 
that he roused up. “Go away!” he shrieked. 
“If it were not for you worthless niggers, this 
horrible war never’d been. I wish you were 
all flung into the seal” 

“Oh, sir! Oh, Marse Biles, don’t talk that- 
a-way! We’s here,” cried the frightened 
negro. “We aint brung ourselves. We aint 
to blame. We’s human. You allays, said we 
are, Marse Biles.” 

“Don’t Marse Biles me!” growled the fren- 
zied father. “Go and fight for your freedom, 
and prove you are fit to have it. Don’t let me 
see you again. You and your like have cost 
me too dear.” 

Washington, his face curiously gray, hurried 
off. The next morning his sign and barber 
pole were gone, and he had vanished. 

The President’s emancipation proclamation 
had gone into effect, and a second draft was 
about to be made. It was Saturday morning, 
and Josephine had committed to memory her 
Sunday-school lesson, sewed what Grandma 
called “her stent,” practised Czerny’s five- 
finger exercises, counting every beat, and 
worked upon the “Variations on Home, Sweet 
Home” by Grobe, until she was tired. 
Grandma was in her bedroom sewing fresh 
ribbons upon her cap, just laundered. There 


ii8 JOSEPHINE 

was still an hour before dinner. After a few 
moments’ study of ^‘The Lives of the Saints,” 
Josephine slipped lightly down the heavily- 
carpeted front stairs and out upon the porch. 
The varnish Nature had in autumn carefully 
spread over the horse-chestnut buds glim- 
mered in the bright March sunshine. The 
balm-o’-Gilead tree at the corner gave out a 
medicinal odor. Somewhere a brave robin 
fluted, and a jay answered derisively. The 
daffodils were thrusting up their green spears. 
Josephine went slowly to the gate enjoying 
everything, though there was an anxious 
pucker between her delicately-penciled brows, 
for letters from ^^the fathers” were overdue. 
From the gate she went slowly down to Dr. 
Pardee’s office. He was seated, his back to 
the door, his silk hat on the back of his head, 
his nose in the pages of the ^‘New York 
World.” 

“The country is going straight to perdition,” 
he asserted when she had made him aware of 
her presence, and he had with unconscious 
courtesy removed his hat and given her a chair. 
“It is literally brother against brother, and 
sometimes son against father.” He paced the 
floor a few seconds, his leathery face drawn 
with suffering, then he burst out huskily, “My 
boy, the only child I ever had, is down there 


VOLUNTEERS AND OTHERS 119 

with Sheridan. My sister’s boys are with Lee. 
They call me ^a copperhead’! A copperhead, 
little friend, is a snake that strikes without 
warning. And they call me that because I hate 
this war. God alone knows how I hate it! I’d 
give my life to stop it. More, — I’d suffer even 
as Jesus did, on the cross.” Something in 
Josephine’s intent look made him pause. 
Again he was the physician, forgetful of him- 
self, anxious to care for and help others. 
“Forgive me, little one,” he added in his 'usual 
quiet voice. “You cannot understand, and 
thank God you cannot!” 

“But I do, more than you think,” she pro- 
tested. “There’s my fathers. The war is in 
everything. I was to go to people of my own 
mamma’s, and I cannot. Oh, Virginia and I 
understand.” 

Just then a woman came up the steps with 
a baby in her arms. The apple-round cheeks 
of the little one were flushed and mottled. The 
doctor rose with a smothered exclamation, and 
turning to Josephine said abruptly, “Run 
home.” 


CHAPTER XVI 

HIRAM ESCAPES THE DRAFT 

j^^HERE’S half an hour before dinner, 
A Virginia,” said Josephine, as she 
skipped along homeward. “Since Dr. Pardee’s 
afraid we’ll ketch things, we’ll go up in the 
woodshed chamber and find some more papers 
with that story of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in 
them.” 

The Dobard wood-shed chamber was a big, 
sunny room in which was what Grandma 
called “The Wanderer’s Bed,” because at in- 
tervals she had permitted some unfortunate 
traveler who had begged lodging to occupy it. 
The day of the professional tramp was just 
dawning. The “wanderer” of the early sixties 
was usually a shiftless being looking for easy 
work, but still work. Beside the bed there 
were chests, and trunks, and broken furniture, 
and even an old bookcase full of papers and 
books, most of them French. A yawning pipe- 
hole cut years before to accommodate a 
laundry stove and long disused, let one see what 
was going on below, if he desired. Josephine 
had found the place one rainy afternoon when 




















A Ferndale soldier mustered out bj' death. 





:•■ ■ .-gspit- '■ '-^.VS V. . - : :■ . ;•, ■ ; i,. ^ ^3 



• 

K-v ■ 

•• • * * ' . ’•.- 

. j q 

k * ’. « '. s ‘ ^ y " ' • * ■» ^ • 

' ^ ! • ■'/> - 

-v.'^ 




» 1 • S...I r 

J *jCt- • 

I 

■*■ 1/ ' 


^ , 1 ^ ♦ 


5^i5y!^ : ’■ •1 ■ ■ 


-"'l^ 



' .r’-. m. . • . • C f ' ‘ 


VyV’^r * 



C&: 


’Y-v* >■'■ ', ''•:*■:■•'■ " i.* •“ 

•>..*'*, : -• 'i- •. <.■■, ■?■■ '-vll i • 

• 2f. t * vCi Lm 

> - : r ' ■ f' • ^ 




♦ ' ■• .r ^ * J* . '■ i % '. ^ ^ V 1 * . ''** ’ 

-i- '■ .^r^' .< ■„' 1^. •- r'l. 


.w-v*- : 



tfc*; 


** f . 




* %. 





’*^'3 ^ r -. lVV 

5 ^ ie’ 



HIRAM ESCAPES THE DRAFT 121 

Grandma was napping, and had thereafter 
moused in the old bookcase to her own great 
content. There was La Fontaine’s fables bound 
in calf, and Florian and Antoine Houdard De 
Lamotte each in red muslin, and all full of pic- 
tures. “Paul and Virginia” was in blue muslin, 
and the Journal of Eugenie de Guerin was in 
red morocco, while the poems of Beranger were 
in drab with much gilding. There was all of 
Chateaubriand in lemon-colored paper, much 
the worse for damp, and many others that later 
became the beginnings of the French section 
of Ferndale Public Library. There were 
English books, too, all improving, and piles of 
old magazines and papers, among the latter 
“The National Era,” in which Josephine had 
found Mrs. Stowe’s immortal story. She rum- 
maged hastily for the paper which would tell 
her more about little Eva when a step sounded 
in the woodshed below. Glancing down the 
pipe-hole she saw it was Hiram. For a few 
minutes he split kindlings for Ann Mary’s fire. 
Then he sat down on a great hickory knot and 
made a groaning noise that again attracted 
Josephine’s attention. He had stretched out 
his left foot which was disfigured by a great 
bunion. With a sudden movement he caught 
up the ax, and the next moment dealt that un- 
offending foot a fearful blow. Josephine went 


122 JOSEPHINE 

down the stairs and out into the street to Dr. 
Pardee’s office with a swiftness that did her 
credit, while drawn by Hiram’s shrill shriek 
of pain, Saunders, his wife, Ann Mary, and 
Grandma came hurrying to the woodshed. 
Old Dodson also came hurrying over. 

“Mercy to me, you’ve hurt yourself, haint 
you!” exclaimed Mrs. Saunders, who, when 
excited, twittered like a sparrow. “I most cut 
th’ end o’ one o’ my fingers off tryin’ to split 
kindlin’ once, when Mr. Saunders, he was 
settin’ on a jury.” 

“Like enough ye got holt o’ a piece o’ slip- 
pery elm,” put in old Dodson, who came for- 
ward with some authority. “Better let’s see 
th’ damage. ’Tisn’t a good plan to squeeze 
sock an’ shoe too hard into a cut, ef you’re cut 
much, which it looks like,” and he pointed at 
the red stain gathering about Hiram’s hands 
pressed close about the injured foot. 

“Wait till I get some linen,” commanded 
Grandma. “And you, Saunders, get Dr. 
Pardee. Ann Mary, we’ll need water and soft 
cloths.” 

“That’s right,” assented Dodson, pulling at 
his whiskers and looking speculatively at 
Hiram. “I s’pose your ax glanced,” he began, 
looking curiously at the pile of kindling. 
“Beats all the sort o’ stuff they’ll send ye from 


HIRAM ESCAPES THE DRAFT 123 

Bentham’s. An’ their coal’s no better’n their 
wood. Last lot I got was half stun an’ slate. 
With butter sixty cents a pound, an’ taxes on 
everythin’ but air, it looks like the last 
days can’t be far off. If ’twan’t we’ve been 
enjoyin’ uncommon health since we give up 
anything that grows in th’ ground, I’d be 
despondent.” 

“Hiram, he favors th’ Fitches, that’s his 
mother’s folks,” chirped Mrs. Saunders, who, 
as Hiram’s relative, had come forward, and 
stood close beside him. “I’m on th’ father’s 
side. But th’ Fitches are awful nice folks. 
’Liakim Fitch, Hiram’s uncle, raised a com- 
pany, an’ got his right leg shot off in one of 
the first battles of th’ war, and — ” 

Just then Dr. Pardee arrived, and Grandma 
came with a roll of linen. Two minutes later 
Ann Mary said dinner was ready. 

As Josephine went slowly homeward that 
afternoon, school over. Dr. Pardee called her 
into his office, and that they might not be 
interrupted made her step into the surgery. 

“Now tell me all about it,” he commanded 
when he had closed the door. 

“I told you this morning. He chopped his 
foot.” 

“And he did it on purpose?” 

Josephine was silent, and the doctor con- 


124 JOSEPHINE 

tinued, “Of course I know he did it purposely, 
and not chopping kindling.” 

“If you are afraid, you cannot help it. You 
are just afraid,” argued Josephine. 

“You can prevent yourself doing base acts 
because you are afraid,” declared the doctor. 

“Yow could, and perhaps I, — but perhaps 
not Hiram.” 

“I suppose you know it’s a bad business 
driving a rusty ax through a shoe and dirty 
sock between the great toe and the one next.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“And I s’pose you know the draft is today.” 

Josephine was silent, and the doctor con- 
tinued, “You may be right about Hiram. His 
mother is a very timid woman, and his father 
is a foolish, quick-tempered man that never 
should have the care of animals, because when 
they vex him he is cruel to them.” 

Again there was silence, broken only by the 
ticking of the old clock between the two win- 
dows. “I guess you are right to keep still, for 
talking will not put Hiram’s foot back where 
it was before he struck it, nor even help make 
it whole.” 

“I’m glad I’ve been very lucky in fathers,” 
observed Josephine thoughtfully. “You don’t 
seem to have any choice.” 

Two weeks passed. Hiram’s name was not 


HIRAM ESCAPES THE DRAFT 125 

drawn from the fateful box. His foot and leg, 
despite all Dr. Pardee could do, became mon- 
strous. Erysipelas had set in, and the ax had 
carried poison with it. If at first old Saunders 
made some biting remarks full of suspicion, 
Hiram’s sufferings soon made him silent and 
kind. Mrs. Saunders lavished herself in serv- 
ice. “Kin are kin,” she said, “and if kin don’t 
stand by kin, who will? Anyway we’re in this 
world to help each other, seems to me.” 

Delirium and then unconsciousness came at 
the close of the second week. Hiram’s last 
conscious act was to confess the whole poor 
story to Dr. Vandercook, and it was the old 
minister who had charge of the funeral. He 
had climbed so far up the heights of life, that 
he not only had frequent glimpses of the glory 
beyond it, but he also saw deep into the causes 
of human weakness and mistakes, so he read 
the one hundred and third psalm, and with 
great tenderness dwelt upon the fourteenth 
verse, “He knoweth our frame, and remem- 
bereth we are dust.” As for Ferndale in gen- 
eral it had too much upon its mind to give 
much attention to one poor chicken-hearted 
youth, who dared death to escape duty to his 
country. 


CHAPTER XVII 

HOW MADAME PANALLE TAUGHT FRENCH 

M ISS SADWELL used the four spacious 
rooms upstairs for her school, and 
usually the class in advanced French recited 
in the south room, while Josephine was recit- 
ing in mental arithmetic in the east room, but 
one day a carryall drawn by two fat bay horses 
brought a stout, middle-aged lady, a lean, mid- 
dle-aged man, a fat old gentleman, a plump 
little girl of eight, a fat poodle, and a sleek 
old black man who sat on the high seat in front 
and drove, and deposited them at Miss Sad- 
well’s front door. The stout old gentleman was 
Miss Sadwell’s only living uncle, Noah Little- 
john by name, and the stout lady was his daugh- 
ter, Mrs. Riggs, and the lean man was her hus- 
band, Mr. Augustus Riggs, and the little girl 
was their darling only child whom they ex- 
pected to put in Miss Sadwell’s school the next 
September. 

Naturally Miss Sadwell was delighted to 
see these people, but they took up space, and 
for their benefit one of the schoolrooms be- 
came a bedroom, and the wide, pleasant lower 


MADAME TAUGHT FRENCH 127 

hall was used for recitations. But it was the 
custom of Miss SadwelFs odd brother, Phile- 
tus, to stroll through this hall at intervals, 
curiously sucking air through his teeth, and 
muttering to himself. And he did not refrain 
from these performances even before pupils. 
It was said he had injured his brain in the 
study of law. It is certain he was not quite 
right, for big and strong, he allowed his sister 
to support him, and busied himself reading 
newspapers, and going to the post-office, where 
he seemed always expecting to receive some- 
thing important, though nothing ever came. 
So after several days of vexing interruptions, 
Madame Panalle insisted on hearing her class 
in advanced French in the east room, though 
the mental arithmetic went on at the same 
time. 

It was a golden morning. All tasks seemed 
easy, and Josephine had her arithmetic lesson 
so well in hand, she could give some attention 
to Madame, and the History of Louis XIV. 
Madame’s fair, freckled face, blue eyes and 
red hair were set out by a delaine gown of 
reddish purple in which at intervals bloomed 
life-size pink roses. About her neck was a 
wide collar of muslin that did credit to her 
skill in embroidery. A shell cameo brooch as 
large as a butter pat held it together. On her 


128 JOSEPHINE 

head was a structure of reddish-purple ribbon 
which concealed the thinness of her hair on 
the crown, if it did not hide the fact that the 
neat coil at the back of her head was of a 
different tint from the bandeaux, standing out 
either side of her high-boned cheeks. 
Madame’s hoop was large and caused her 
skirts to billow about. All these matters Jo- 
sephine noted with keen interest. She also 
observed Madame’s long, big-knuckled hands, 
the fingers all nearly the same length, and flat 
at the ends. Another pair exactly like them, 
though larger, had belonged to Sergeant 
McTavish, who had, too, Madame’s features, 
and at thought of him a pang of homesickness 
and longing for vanished Post Klamas darted 
through her. After “the fathers” and the 
grizzled old Colonel, had come McTavish in 
her regard. Madame’s voice was also the voice 
of McTavish, one octave higher. 

“It is you, Mam’selle Brierly, who shall 
bee-gin,” Madame commanded in English. 
“The place is chapter twenty-eight.” 

Jerusha rose, and resting most of her weight 
on her left foot, read a few sentences briskly. 

“Stand correctly,” Madame interrupted. 
“All of you nearly is upon one foot as a hen 
asleep. And how many times must one tell 
you, what by now you should know without 


MADAME TAUGHT FRENCH 129 

telling, that in the so charming French lan- 
guage ^t’ final is silent save in a very few in- 
stances, while ^c’ final is always sounded, save 
when preceded by ‘n.’ Attendez (pay atten- 
tion)” she made a sweeping gesture, then re- 
sumed in exactly the same tone, “Miss Tilly 
Williams, it is two demerits to chew the gum 
in school. You shall put your quid in the 
stove.” 

The sound of Miss Tilly’s gaiters crossing 
the floor, and the opening and closing of the 
door of the red-nosed little stove, mingled with 
Della Laprade’s answer to the question, “eight- 
ninths of twenty-seven are how many times 
one-fourth of twenty-four.” Then Madame 
resumed: “I myself will read these sentences 
as they should be read.” She shook a long and 
rather gouty forefinger at the girls before her, 
and began reading with a fine Scotch accent 
Voltaire’s limpid sentences, and interspersed 
with the readings were reprimands. I trans- 
late the French. “ ^Louis XIV devorait sa do- 
leur en public. II sa laissa voir a I’ordinaire.’ ” 
(Louis XIV controlled his grief in public. 
He showed himself as usual.) “Think shame 
to yourself to whisper, Louisa Cliff. I give 
you two demerits. ‘Mais en secret les ressenti- 
ments de tant de malheurs le penetraient, et lui 
donnaient des convulsions.’ ” (But in secret the 


130 JOSEPHINE 

pangs of so many misfortunes pierced him, and 
made him suffer.) “Mam’selle Jones, your 
elbows remove from your desk. ^11 eprouvait 
routes ces pertes domestique a la suite d’une 
guerre malheureuse, avant qu’il fut assure fut’ ” 
(In the course of an unhappy war he endured 
all these domestic losses before he could be 
assured of) — “Fidelia Maria Brierly, buzzing 
with the lips is quite unnecessary in study. 
Me, — I was not permitted to move the lips, let 
alone to buzz, — Me la paix et dans un temps 
ou misere desolait le royaume. On ne le vit 
pas succombeP ” (of peace, and in a time when 
misery desolated the kingdom. He was never 
seen to give way.) Just at this moment a large 
brown spider ranging about the tall book- 
case at Madame’s side, swung off into space 
and dropping upon her headdress, sprang from 
thence upon her book. Spiders Madame 
abhorred. Bouncing up, her book fell from 
her hand as she shrieked, “P’sarve us!” 

Josephine, who had been watching her as if 
spellbound since recalling the long, big- 
knuckled hands of Sergeant McTavish, 
dropped back in her seat with an audible 
chuckle. The sound, though not loud, did not 
escape Madame, upset as she was. 

“But Miss Dobard, a spider is a very 
wicked animal!” she exclaimed in French. 


MADAME TAUGHT FRENCH 13 1 

(Mais, Mademoiselle Dobard, un arraignee 
est un tres vilain animal.) 

“Pardonnez moi, mais la arraignee est 
feminin” (Pardon, but ^spideP is feminine), 
replied Josephine, to whom French was almost 
as well known as English, and with perfect 
politeness, unconscious that to correct the 
gender of Madame’s nouns was indiscreet, if 
not indecorous. A mistake is a mistake, no 
matter who makes it, she would have reasoned, 
and if there are but two genders in French, 
why one must accept the fact. 

“Thank you. Mademoiselle,” replied Mad- 
ame in French, her heart beating fast with 
dread and vexation. She did not know that 
her class had not understood Josephine’s low- 
toned correction, since their ears had no such 
knowledge of the language as their eyes. 
Thereafter Josephine’s attention was fixed 
upon Madame more closely than ever. To be 
sure, McTavish had a face like sole leather, 
but his nose and chin were duplicates of 
Madame’s. He held his head like hers, that 
is like a turkey that has spread his tail and 
curves his neck to excite admiration. His 
voice, too, had odd cadences, and it would have 
been just like him, were he teaching, to mix 
up instruction and scoldings, as Madame had 
passed from Voltaire’s eulogies upon the great 


132 JOSEPHINE 

French king to remarks upon the manners of 
her class and the students studying near her. 

At the noon hour, as the pupils filed out, 
Madame laid a detaining hand upon Joseph- 
ine’s arm. “Wait,” she commanded. Joseph- 
ine stood expectant, and when they were quite 
alone, Madame said harshly, “What for you so 
stare at me all the chance you have, and why 
so smile?” 

“I did not know I smiled,” said Josephine. 
“If I did it was because — because — ” 

“Voila! Because why?” 

“Because of Sergeant McTavish.” 

“Eh — now!” Madame’s tone became ex- 
tremely Scotch, and her lips quite white. 
“Really — And where did you meet this 
Sergeant McTavish?” 

“At Post Klamas. His name was Angus, 
and he was a brave, good man.” 

“Aye, — was he? And that was far away on 
the Pacee-fic! It was myself knew folk o’ that 
name in Montreal. Of coorse ’twas in th’ 
days o’ my youth. An’ did this Angus come 
East wid ye?” 

“Not with us. I think I heard my papa 
Doctor say some of the men were ordered 
East. They could not all come because of the 
Indians.” 

“Mmmmmmah!” murmured Madame 


MADAME TAUGHT FRENCH 133 

wearily and half rose, then sat down again and 
resumed her most French manner. ^‘Listen, 
Mam’selle. When one older, as for example I, 
makes a slip of th’ tongue before one younger, 
as for example you, and the two are not alone, 
but with others, as for example a class, it is 
impolite for the younger one to correct that 
slip.” 

Josephine remained silent. The clock ticked 
loudly, perhaps by intention to warn all hear- 
ing it that the noon hour was passing. Ma- 
dame gathered up her book, and the quaint 
little leather-covered box she called her reti- 
cule. ^Tt is well to be correct,” she added 
gently, “but to correct others, — that is different, 
and not always courteous. My friend, it may 
sound strange, but I think it even a misfortune, 
to acquire the habit of setting people right.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


THE PROCESSION WITHOUT THE FLAG 

dear young ladies, my niece insists 
tV A that I myself make a little explana- 
tion of my motives in offering four prizes to 
this school for the next decade.” Mr. Noah 
Littlejohn nervously mopped his big, round 
face with a red and yellow silk handkerchief, 
coughed, and then thrust his hands into his 
pockets. ^‘My niece was at first opposed to 
my offering these prizes. She said you should 
work your best because of the preciousness of 
knowledge. You should. But — we all work 
for prizes of some sort. I have worked my 
big farm, first to support my family, second to 
be known as one of the best farmers in the 
county. Now you are working perhaps first to 
acquire knowledge, and to learn to use your 
minds but you are also working to please your 
parents, to win the prize of their satisfaction, 
and the prizes I offer will, I hope, be still an- 
other inducement to make you apply yourselves 
to your studies. The first two prizes are for 
excellence in composition. For most of us a 
very small list of words does duty. This is a 


PROCESSION WITHOUT FLAG 135 

pity, for the English language has words for 
every shade of feeling and thought, and to be 
able to express one’s ideas with precision and 
ease is an accomplishment a queen might well be 
eager to acquire. The second prizes are for 
proficiency in mathematics, and I offer them 
because a practical knowledge of mathematics 
is essential to everyone’s peace of mind. I 
have known men who earn, say three dollars 
a day, who have a hazy notion they will come 
out all right at the end of the year if every 
now and then they spend five dollars a day. 
I have known men who, earning five dollars a 
day, felt poor if they spent at the rate of one 
dollar a day. Young ladies, the time is not far 
away, when you may be responsible for homes. 
You are quite old enough to begin thinking of 
what it costs to feed, clothe and house you. 
You are old enough to realize that what you 
need is one thing, and what you may desire, 
quite another. You are old enough to study 
proportion in spending. Some people are al- 
ways sadly one-sided in spending money. Too 
much goes for furniture with one, another 
spends too much on clothes, or amusements. 
As the way one speaks reveals how he was 
brought up and trained at home, and in school, 
so the way he spends his money reveals char- 
acter.” Just then Mr. Littlejohn paused to 


136 JOSEPHINE 

take breath, and not thinking of anything more 
to say, he blew his nose resoundingly, and sat 
down, whereat all the pupils clapped their 
hands. Twenty minutes later the big carryall 
came round to the front door, and after Mrs. 
Riggs and her little girl, Mr. Littlejohn and 
then Mr. Riggs climbed in, and black Nimshi 
on the box gathered up the reins and tickled 
the right side of the right bay horse, then 
flicked the left side of the left bay, and in less 
time than I can tell it the school settled into 
its usual morning routine. 

^‘I’m going to try for the junior prize in 
composition,” Bina Forrest announced to Jo- 
sephine at recess. “I really ought to get it, for 
papa was a judge, and mamma wrote for 
magazines. She signed herself Southern 
Lady.’ ” 

“Well, I’m going to try for the prize in 
mathematics,” said Flo Leet sharply. “You 
don’t have to make up anything to come right 
in figures. There they are, before you.” 

“And your mother does all the hard sums 
for you,” put in Fidelia Maria Brierly. “Our 
mother’s! too busy.” 

“She helps all we need,” Jerusha interposed, 
her face flushing. “She says to understand a 
thing through and through you must think it 
out yourself.” 


PROCESSION WITHOUT FLAG 137 

“Mathematics is for clerks,” sniffed Bina. 
“Ladies don’t have to bother with ’em.” 

“Don’t they!” exclaimed Fidelia Maria. “If 
Grandaunt Fidelia had bothered about her 
money, she’d ’a’ had some now she is old.” 

“I think I’ll try for the composition prize, 
too,” said Jerusha. “If I don’t win a prize. 
I’ll improve.” 

“Me for figgers,” exclaimed Fidelia. “I 
want to come out even every day, then I’ll 
sleep well every night.” 

“Think you’ll try?” asked Flo Leet, turning 
carelessly to Josephine. 

“I’m not saying.” Josephine had grown 
quite pale, so angry was she that all seemed to 
count her out as a possible prize winner. 

“That’s right. Work,” said Mrs. Thorne, 
who had come up just in time to hear some of 
the talk, and who guessed at Josephine’s state 
of mind. 

That afternoon Grandma went to a formal 
tea-party, invited to meet Mrs.^ Lysander Jones, 
wife of a senator, and guest of her husband’s 
brother. Judge Polluck Jones. Born a Van 
Bucklin, Mrs. Lysander was one of the few na- 
tives of Ferndale Grandma sometimes spoke of 
as “the first.” Perhaps for this reason Grandma 
wore her best violet and gray brocade, and one 
of her finest lace sets, while above her best hypo- 


138 JOSEPHINE 

crite was carefully set a cap, pronounced by 
Miss Vredder, “a perfect duck.” 

Ann Mary usually assisted her mistress 
when a careful toilet was to be made, but her 
only sister living on the edge of town had sent 
for her, as her baby was ailing, and Grandma 
would not let her delay. 

The flutter of going anywhere always made 
the old lady feel quite young and equal to any- 
thing. But arranging the best hypocrite was 
not easy. The light was poor, and so were her 
eyes. The result was the fine white line of the 
parting was not straight, and some gray elf- 
locks showed at the temples and ears, an effect 
she would have considered indecent. One 
would think a person wearing a frank and 
above-board hypocrite would grow careless of 
such trifles. That her own straight, lustrous, 
white hair showed plainly through the lace of 
her cap at the back, and the bright, chestnut 
hypocrite, waved as only a hypocrite can wave, 
did not trouble her a bit. The hypocrite set 
straight, and covering every wisp of her own 
hair in front, was what she demanded. Joseph- 
ine had learned this perfectly. But when 
Grandma rustled up to her and said anxiously, 
“Am I all right?” she replied, “Yes, ma’am.” 

The “fathers,” or Daphne, would have dis- 
trusted Josephine’s tone, and perhaps it did not 


PROCESSION WITHOUT FLAG 139 

ring true to Grandma, for she said, “Are you 
sure?” as Josephine folded her beautiful white 
crape shawl about her, and gave her her fan; 
and Josephine again said, “Yes, ma’am,” in 
that strange tone. 

“I remembered Madame Panalle,” she con- 
fided to Janey when the old carriage rolled 
away with Grandma, Saunders in a silk hat and 
white gloves driving Foxy and Firefly. “I’m 
not going to collect misfortunes, setting people 
right.” 

After arraying Janey in a new lace bonnet 
made by Daphne, to take the place of the red 
leather cap she had worn all the way from the 
Pacific, Josephine went down to see Dr. 
Pardee. 

Even as she stood in the door, Jakey Budd, 
head of the Ferndale volunteer fire company, 
came up behind her, and behind him was Jef- 
ferson Hokum, his cousin and first assistant. 

“There’s a hurry call for th’ flag. Doctor,” 
began Jakey, taking off his cap as the doctor 
rose from the couch where he had been lying, 
and came forward. “Th’ men are going, the 
new fellows I mean, and we are going with 
them as far as we can.” 

It is said there is a perfectly blind spot in 
every eye. It often seems as if there were a 
spot of unreason in every mind. No one knew 


140 JOSEPHINE 

better than the doctor, that a gift is a gift, and 
that in presenting the silk flag to Ferndale, he 
gave up all control of it. But now, as he 
thought of its lustrous folds flashing over men 
drafted to fight the South, he lost his common 
sense. 

“You can’t have it,” he replied sharply. 
“It’s been bad enough to see it escorting volun- 
teers. But when Abe Lincoln drags men to 
war by force — ” 

“There’ll be trouble,” put in Hokum in a 
low voice. “There’s a lot o’ new folks in town, 
who don’t know you gave us the flag. They 
think you’ve just got it.” 

“An’ you did give it. Doc’,” said Jakey. 
“What you give, you give, you know. It’s th’ 
end of it for you.” 

“It shall not float over hireling cutthroats.” 

Down the street the band was playing “The 
Girl I Left Behind Me.” There came with 
the strains the sound of marching feet. The 
next instant a crowd filled the corner. Elderly 
men and women with drawn faces, and boys 
and girls jostled each other on the pavement. 
In the middle of the road marched “The 
Home Guard,” all elderly men. At their head 
was Major Jenkins, who had lost an arm in 
the Mexican War. It was the Major who had 
sent Jakey and Jefferson ahead for the flag. Just 


PROCESSION WITHOUT FLAG 141 

before reaching the doctor’s door, they halted. 
The band, still blowing and drumming, also 
halted behind them. The company of volun- 
teers and drafted men had no choice. They 
halted. 

“March on!” commanded the sharp voice of 
the young officer in charge. He was not in the 
“regular” army, had been a grocer in fact a few 
months before, so he added as if in excuse for 
himself, “We’ve no time to lose.” 

Curious to know why the flag did not ap- 
pear, the band came to a ridiculous stop. The 
old doctor pushed to the doorway in spite of 
Jakey Budd’s towering bulk, and Jefferson 
Hokum’s worried expostulations. “Make all 
the haste you wish!” he shouted, his voice like 
a trumpet, and full of accusing. “Men who 
go to fight their brothers, should carry a black 
flag.” 

Luckily the young officer had quick wits, 
also an aged, fiery uncle, who hated the war 
with all the fury of Dr. Pardee. He, too, 
would have refused the flag to drafted soldiers. 
“Steady!” he commanded. “Steady! Ad- 
vance!” 

A shrill, far-away car whistle gave emphasis 
to the order. The Home Guard, the band, and 
the newly-made soldiers moved on. A few 
rough men, who had been drinking, flung 


142 ' JOSEPHINE 

themselves at the doctor. Jakey Budd, despite 
his boyish name, was a stalwart young giant, 
with fists like hammers. Jefferson Hokum was 
his close second. Just what did happen no one 
could tell. The doctor slipped, and went 
down, striking the back of his head upon the 
corner of his little red-nosed stove, and Joseph- 
ine went down with him, for she had clasped 
her slender arms about him, placing her body 
between him and those who would harm him. 
When she came to herself, she was in her own 
pretty room, and Daphne and Ann Mary and 
the new, young doctor were in attendance, 
while Grandma sat helplessly watching, in the 
armed chair. 

“She’ll be all right in a little,” comforted the 
young doctor. “I’ll leave powders for her that 
will bring sleep.” 

“Sleep is it!” exclaimed Ann Mary, blind 
to the doctor’s signals. “There’s heart-scaldin’ 
sorrer this day in Ferndale ’t’ll kape many an 
eye open th’ night. Niver better man stept. 
God rist his soul!” 

“She’s gone again!” cried Grandma, stretch- 
ing out her hands. “Save her! I can’t live 
without her!” 

When Josephine again came to herself, Ann 
Mary was gone, and Mrs. Thorne was sitting 
beside the bed. It was ten days before Joseph- 


PROCESSION WITHOUT FLAG 143 

ine was able to leave her room, and when she 
came down stairs, a little festival was made of 
the occasion. There were flowers, and Ann 
Mary made a white fruit cake that was Joseph- 
ine’s favorite. But after the dainty luncheon. 
Grandma said almost grimly, “Come into my 
bedroom, my dear.” 

Joel Ladd blinked his brown eyes at Joseph- 
ine as she rose to obey. After the death of 
Hiram Berry, Joel had taken his place, and like 
his brother Abel, he ate at the family table. 
Like Abel, Joel was interested in everything 
and everybody, and had quickly learned the 
signs of Grandma’s varying moods, and now as 
well as pantomime of eyes and lips could con- 
vey it, he warned Josephine that she was, as 
he would have said, about “to catch it.” 

“What made you let me go off to Mrs. Pol- 
luck Jones’ party looking every- which-a-way?” 
the old lady began the moment they were 
alone. As Josephine did not at once reply, she 
continued, “That Forrest girl, Mrs. Jones’ 
niece, or grandniece, came and fixed me. She 
said my bonnet had pulled my hair to one side. 
But I know better. And she fixed the bad 
places by my ears. You’d ought to be ashamed 
to let me go to meet Sallie Van Bucklin look- 
ing careless. She’s all of sixty-seven for all of 
her black hair, and pink and blue satin.” 


144 JOSEPHINE 

“But Madame Panalle was vexed when I 
told her things,” protested Josephine gently. 

“What did you tell her?” 

“It was about the gender of a French word. 
I thought she would rather be right. But she 
was displeased.” 

“But Madame is herself French, at least 
IVe always so understood,” said Grandma, be- 
wildered, for she knew nothing about French 
speech, with its poverty of genders and strin- 
gent laws of agreement for adjectives and 
articles. 

“Perhaps,” assented Josephine doubtfully. 

“What did she do to you?” 

“She made me stay after school, and she 
said it is better to be polite than to set people 
right when they are wrong.” 

“There are times and seasons for all things,” 
declared Grandma. “If you get along pleasant 
in this world you’ve got to use judgment. For 
a scholar to correct a teacher hearing a class 
isn’t perhaps just the right thing. But she 
overdid herself in keeping you after school for 
that. Your grandfather was one of the most 
prominent men in this country, and so was my 
father. I think Madame should remember she 
is only a hired person.” 

“But, Grandma, if grandfathers make you 
of account, I should behave according,” pro- 


PROCESSION WITHOUT FLAG 145 

tested Josephine, astonished at Grandma’s top- 
lofty state of mind toward Madame as a mere 
“hired person.” “I’ve thought of what she said 
a lot, and I see myself, that being right isn’t 
everything, and that it is better to be courteous 
than to be too quick at correcting people.” 

“Well, you correct my hypocrite if ever you 
see it one-sided again, and don’t you ever let 
me go off with a lot of gray hairs sticking out 
around my ears.” 

Josephine flushed, then wriggled nervously. 

“Well! What is it?” demanded Grandma. 

“Isn’t it nice for ladies to have white hair 
like men? — Like Dr. Vandercook, and Dr. 
Pardee, and — ” 

“Nice!” exclaimed Grandma explosively. 

“Yes. Why cannot they wear their pretty 
white hair?” 

“I think I see myself going around with only 
my own hair!” snapped Grandma, much net- 
tled. “What men do is no pattern for me. The 
men themselves would be the first to say so.” 

“It’s a puzzling world, Virginia Carter,” 
Josephine whispered in the quiet of her own 
room. “Doing as you’d like to be done by 
don’t always work well. I s’pose it’s ’cause we 
don’t all like the same things. I reckon it’s 
best to do as folks want to be done by. But it 
don’t say that in the Bible.” 


CHAPTER XIX 

OLD FRIENDS APPEAR 

A NN MARY! Oh Ann Mary! There’s 
-LX McTavish of ours, and — yes, it is Abel 
Ladd with him, and they look awful!” In her 
excitement Josephine pulled at stout Ann 
Mary’s mohair skirt with such force it began 
parting company with the waist. 

They were crossing the wide open square 
before the post-office, which was fuller than 
usual, for there had been a great battle. From 
the great yellow omnibus which had just 
rumbled up, two wasted, haggard, and shabby 
men had clambered. One, the younger, had 
supported the other, who, unaided, would 
never have reached the long wooden settle con- 
veniently near and just one side of the door of 
“Jennings’ Tonsorial Parlors,” which had for 
a few weeks occupied the place once the 
modest barber shop of Washington Clay. 

“We’re from Salisbury Prison, friends,” said 
the younger man, who was, as Josephine had 
said, no other than Abel Ladd. “Somebody 
send word to the Knight House, and get Dr. 
Pardee. Pard here is busted. I was for takin’ 


OLD FRIENDS APPEAR 147 

him up home with me, but I’m afraid he aint 
equal to it.” The men pressed about the two 
like bees about a drop of honey. They picked 
up the feeble one, and set him on the bench as 
gently as if he were a baby. Josephine, usually 
afraid of crowds, wriggled and bored her way 
through this one, and, as in duty bound, Ann 
Mary followed her. 

“McTavish!” cried Josephine. ^Tt’s you?” 

“Aye,” the yellow scarecrow assented, “it’s 
what thim deevils left o’ me. But, lass, how 
come you here?” 

“I’m with my grandma.” 

“You’re nothin’ but bones an’ nankeen hide!” 
Ann Mary exclaimed, as she grasped Abel’s 
lean arms. “An’ sind no word to hotels. It’s 
Hersilf as’ll be proud to entertain ye an’ your 
frind, who it seems knows Josephine. An’ as 
for doctors, it’s nunchucks ye’ll have to do wid, 
like th’ rist o’ us, for Dr. Pardee, God rist his 
soul in glory, was killed dead in his own office, 
but th’ Lord be praised, not by Ferndale folk, 
but by furriners. It bates iverything th’ way th’ 
country’s fillin’ up wid ’em.” 

“But McTavish — ” began Abel. 

“Jist wait till I have your brother here, an’ 
Saunders, an’ th’ carriage,” interrupted Ann 
Mary. 

Half a dozen buggies and wagons were of- 


148 JOSEPHINE 

fered. In less time than it can be told, griz- 
zled Captain McTavish and Lieutenant Ladd 
were in Grandma Dobard’s best bedrooms, and 
Cupid and Joel Ladd were in attendance. It 
was a whole week, during which he consumed 
seven meals a day, each meal as dainty and 
nourishing as Ann Mary could make it, before 
Abel was fit for the long ride up the hills to 
his home, so Dr. Kendrick said. As for 
McTavish, the doctor bade him remain quiet 
for at least another week. Madame Panalle 
was in Utica the Saturday these two arrived, 
spending the week-end with an old pupil. 
Monday evening she presented herself at 
the big carved front door of the Dobard 
house. Josephine, sitting with Janey and “The 
Lives of the Saints,” in which she read at inter- 
vals, saw her and came running before she 
could touch the bell. “He’s in the front room 
straight up stairs,” she said softly. “I think 
Cupid is with him. You see he knew Cupid 
at Post Klamas, for Cupid was our servant. 
But Cupid’s not well, and it may be Joel. 
Abel walks out, and when he hasn’t him to pet, 
Joel spends every minute he can get doing for 
McTavish.” 

It was a painfully agitated little Madame 
that followed Josephine up the long, winding 
stairs. Their feet made no sound on the thick 


OLD FRIENDS APPEAR 149 

carpet. The Captain lay in an easy chair by 
the window, gazing idly at the white clouds 
sailing the sapphire sky, and then at the great 
chestnut tree in which two squirrels were scam- 
pering. At sight of him all the little fabric of 
fable Madame had woven about herself fell 
away. Forgetting Josephine, dropping her 
cherished reticule on the floor, she ran forward, 
crying, “Angus lad! It’s Maggie!” 

Softly closing the door, Josephine went 
down the back stairs and sought out Joel. 
“You don’t need to go up to look after McTav- 
ish for some time,” she cautioned. “He’s got 
an old friend to see him. Madame Panalle, 
our French teacher, used to know him in Mon- 
treal, when he was young.” 

“Beats all how small th’ world is,” said 
Saunders, who had overheard. “I went to 
New York City once. Didn’t know a soul 
there, an’ who should I meet on Chatham 
street, but Tim Slocum from Hannibal way. 
Stands a body in hand to behave himself.” 

When Josephine went back to her little 
green parlor among the weigelias and honey- 
suckles, she confided to Virginia Carter and 
Janey, “If Madame wants to be French, and 
talks like McTavish, it’s her affair. It can’t 
be wronger to keep still about it, than to keep 
still about Grandma’s being step, and by keep- 


150 JOSEPHINE 

ing still about that no one is hurt, and 
Grandma’s made happy.” Of course Virginia 
and Janey made no objection to this reasoning, 
and the household and Ferndale accepted 
Madame’s explanation of her acquaintance 
with the bronzed captain. The one week 
stretched into three, and still the doctor for- 
bade the invalid’s removal to Pompey Hill. 
On the fourth week Jefferson Hokum was 
brought home to be buried. His father’s 
chronic rheumatism had suddenly become acute, 
then fatal. Somehow Jefferson had then per- 
suaded Granny Ward to permit his cousin, 
Jakey Budd, to rent five of her seventeen rooms, 
and bring into them his dwarfed but very capa- 
ble sister, Debby, and his palsied mother, who 
was Captain John Ward’s own niece. Sure that 
his grandmother would henceforward have the 
best of care, Jefferson had promptly enlisted, 
to be as promptly shot on his first picket duty. 
Josephine, much affected by his death, an- 
nounced to Grandma that she was going to the 
funeral. 

^^There’ll be plenty of people there without 
you,” objected Grandma. 

^^But I knew him real well. We were 
friends,” patiently argued Josephine, ^^and he 
was a hero, Mr. Hokum was. The Captain’s 
written about it. He asked for men to volun- 


OLD FRIENDS APPEAR 151 

teer, he would not send them to the post Mr. 
Hokum had. He asked those that were willing 
to dare it, to step out, and Mr. Hokum 
stepped.” 

^^And who, pray tell me, told you all this?” 

“Madame Panalle.” 

“And who told her?” 

“The Peckses.” 

“Well, I never! I p’sume they’ll go to th’ 
funeral.” 

“Yes. Miss Sally says it will be paying 
proper respect, and I want to pay proper re- 
spect, too. Grandma. Mr. Hokum was an 
awful nice man.” 

“Don’t say ‘awful,’ Josephine.” 

“When I say awful, I mean dreadful,” ex- 
plained Josephine. 

“Dear me suz!” exclaimed Grandma. 
“When will you learn to keep awful and 
dreadful for awe-inspiring and dread-inspiring 
things!” 

Josephine marched up front and sat with the 
mourners, as she had at Dr. Pardee’s funeral, 
and again Ann Mary had something to tell 
Grandma. She had held Jefferson in her arms 
when he was in long dresses, had Ann Mary, for 
she had grown up just back of his father’s home. 
It was quite seemly, she felt, tht she should put 
on her best black dress and go, even though the 


152 JOSEPHINE 

service was in the Methodist church, while she 
was a devoted Catholic. 

“Well, ma’am, ye could put me in a pint 
cup, I was that put about whin herself come 
in, late, wid Washington Clay, an’ him wid 
wan leg gone, which they say he lost wid credit 
to himself. Ye might think it a happenchance 
if Josephine hadn’t pinted straight for the front 
seats which was most full wid Hokums from 
Tug Hill way. Th’ Bileses’ hired girl told 
me ’twas Washington got Hokum’s poor body 
home, but she didn’t know how he did it.” 

“I’ll have a talk with Josephine, and tell her 
what’s what tomorrow,” said Grandma. 

“Of course, you’ll do as you think best, 
ma’am,” said Ann Mary. “But I’ve been 
thinkin’, as it was me as seen her, perhaps I 
could say somethin’ an’ whativer I say’d not 
make her have hard feelin’s toward you.” 
Ann Mary nervously pleated the overskirt of 
her black cashmere, then smoothed it out, and 
added, “Josephine’s terrible sinsible at times, 
an’ thin she aint sinsible at all, which is per- 
haps nat’ral.” 

“Well, try it,” said Grandma. “I’ll own it 
grows harder and harder for me to speak to 
her. You see I grow fonder and fonder of 
her, and I can’t help wanting her fond of me.” 

“Sure it’s a thick head Jakey Budd has to 


OLD FRIENDS APPEAR 153 

cock you up wid th’ Hokum mourners/’ Ann 
Mary began the next morning. Conscious she 
had undertaken no easy task, she approached 
it in a way she thought would give her some 
advantage. 

‘^Jakey Budd didn’t put me there, I went,” 
announced Josephine, turning a very serious 
face toward Ann Mary. “And ’twas I who 
invited Washington Clay to come along.” 

“Whativer next!” exclaimed Ann Mary, 
catching her breath. Then added in a dis- 
passionate tone, “They do say as Washington’s 
showin’’ a dale o’ sinse. Yis. ’Stead o’ hangin’ 
about to be took care of, he’s opened a new 
barber shop as nate as a new pin. All th’ same 
it’s not proper for you to be in sates o’ mournin’ 
wid th’ loikes o’ him.” 

“Why?” Josephine drew her dark brows to- 
gether in a frown. 

“Why? Why, bekase it isn’t. That’s why.” 

“But th’ reason.” Josephine stamped her 
foot. “Tell me th’ reason, Ann Mary.” 

“Land o’ man!” cried the badgered Ann 
Mary. “Ask me why th’ Lord made th’ world 
as he did. It don’t look well for one thing.” 

“Why don’t it?” persisted Josephine. 

“Ask your grandma,” replied the baffled 
Ann Mary, retreating to her pantry and closing 
the door. 


CHAPTER XX 

BLACK CUPID 

those prizes to work for, you’ll 
V V need to have clothes off your mind,” 
said Grandma, after a careful examination of 
Josephine’s wardrobe. wish there was 

something to make over in the green chest, for 
English merino’s three dollars a yard, and 
common Merrimac calico fifty cents. But 
there’s nothing but a bayadere strip silk, and 
an all-wool delaine that might have belonged 
to the Pilgrims.” 

“The girls say the gray and crimson challie 
you had made over for me is just gay.” 

“Gay! Don’t use slang, child, whatever you 
do,” protested Grandma. “I’ll have in Manda 
Pratt. I saw her last week in a new black 
cashmere, she said she got out of an old red 
merino wrapper of her mother’s. Beats all the 
gumption she has! But I’ll send you to Mrs. 
W. W. Peck for aprons. I’ve stuff for four, 
and Smyrna for trimming. You’ll find it a 
queer place, but she’s a master at aprons, which 
is lucky, for after her husband’s sudden death, 
his folks robbed her of everything they could 
get hold of.” 


BLACK CUPID 


155 

“It isn’t aprons or dresses I need, Grandma, 
to win th’ prizes, it’s brains and workin’ ’em.” 

“Yes, yes,” assented Grandma, intent upon 
her own thoughts, “but good clothes are brac- 
ing. At least they’ve always been to me.” 

Josephine found Mrs. Peck on the east side 
of her long, low house in the room that had 
once been her parlor. The French windows 
at the front would have let in sunshine, had not 
the outside blinds been fast closed. The lace 
curtains before them had become a cobwebby 
gray, and between them was a rosewood table, 
on which was a tray of pots in which were long 
dead and dry plants, also festooned with cob- 
webs. Every foot or two on the soft, dusty 
carpet were heaps of rags. When in answer 
to her knock a gentle voice had called, 
“Come!” and Josephine had entered, an alert 
black and tan terrier paused in his burrowing 
in one of these piles and barked fiercely. By 
the open bay window at the east side of the 
room, a small, elderly woman was sewing. 
She looked over her spectacles at Josephine, 
then said in a strange, soft voice, “Be careful. 
Whig has bones hidden all about.” 

Going to this strange sad house a few days 
later, to be “tried on,” Josephine met Daphne. 
“I was watchin’ out fo’ you, chile,” she said, 
“ ’case I wants you to come and see papa. 


156 JOSEPHINE 

Sinct Dr. Pardee’s gone dey aint nobody ad- 
wises wid him, wid wisdom, an’ he be down in 
his mind.” 

Cupid, slumped up in a vast Boston rocking- 
chair, was no longer the sleek round man he 
was when he arrived in Ferndale. He had lost 
much flesh. The whites of his big round eyes 
had become yellow, and his blackness had 
taken on an ashen tone, while his big lips had 
turned purple. 

“Ole Marse Doctor tole me a right sma’t 
back tur mek my preparations, but he kep’ me 
gwine on,” he said mournfully. “O’ cose time 
is a-movin’ on, an’ I’se gittin’ age on me, but 
wid right physic, it ’pear like dar’s a right 
sma’t o’ work in me yit. But this yur new, 
young doctor what call us alius ^cullud folks,’ 
an’ sez we’d ought to wote, he say. What fur 
you want to live?’ ‘Me,’ I sez, ‘I’se used tur 
livin’, an’ I enjies it. I’ve been used tur livin’ 
fo’ a right sma’t.’ An’ all he sez is, ‘Huh!’ 
You’ pa doctor an’ Dr. Pardee aint never talk 
tur me that-a-way. They mek me soothed. 
An’ dey gives me drops as sot me up. O’ cose 
I mek my preparations, an’ when I’m out 
aroun’ I gits excite, an’ I tell little lies, an’ 
sometimes I swear, an’ den I hes my prepara- 
tions tur mek all ovah. It wa’n’t all de drops 
dey give me neither. Dey somehow guv me 


BLACK CUPID 


157 

courage, an’ dey mek me feel as how God aint 
gwine tur be too ha’d on an’ ole nigger man, 
as nevah knew much, an’ tried tur do his bes’.” 

“I’ll ask Dr. Vandercook to come and see 
you,” said Josephine, who had taken one of 
Cupid’s hot hands in both of hers and was 
stroking it. “He thinks a deal of colored 
folks.” 

Cupid gave a snort that meant no, and slowly 
shook his big head. “Naw, naw,” he insisted. 
“I’se too nigh de en’, fo’ new friends. I’se jis 
a plain ole nigger man as wants tur go tur 
heaven, an’ I knows bein’ called ‘cullud,’ aint 
mekin’ me white. I wants you tur pray fo’ 
me, youse’f. Missy. Jis’ arsk Him to ’scuse me 
all he can, fo’ de sake 0’ Jesus.” 

Josephine at once knelt down beside Cupid’s 
chair. “I never prayed out of my own head,” 
she said after a moment, “except to ask God to 
take care of the fathers. Of course, I know 
^Our Father’ and ^Now I lay me.’ ” 

“Dar’s a little one at de en’, yoo Gran’ma 
Pavageau used to say in dem gran’ times when 
I was young, ’bout de Holy Ghos’ — ” 

“Wait — I know,” said Josephine, patting the 
old man’s arm affectionately, and bending her 
head. The old man’s body relaxed. His eyes 
closed as Josephine murmured reverently, 
“ ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 


158 JOSEPHINE 

love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy 
Ghost be with us all evermore!’ ” 

“Dat’s it, chile. With us evermore,’ ” whis- 
pered Cupid. 

^‘And, dear God, help Cupid to go to 
heaven.” 

“Yes, Lord,” assented Cupid. There was a 
moment of silence broken only by the rustling 
of the leaves, then the old man added, “An’ if 
ole Cupid ben’t here to see, I prays de Lord 
to keep you, an’ holp you grow into a gran’ 
sweet lady like my ole Miss, yoo Gran’ma 
Pavageau. Yes, Honey Bug, I ask de Lord fo’ 
dat, ev’y day.” 

That night Cupid went out of life in his 
sleep. A month later. Daphne, being very sad 
and lonely, and accustomed to working hard 
and long for someone, married Washington 
Clay, who came to live with her in the tiny red 
house. Meanwhile, Manda Pratt, armed with 
a pair of long, sharp shears, came to the Do- 
bard house and quickly transformed the old 
gowns in the green chest, into pretty and serv- 
iceable dresses for Josephine. “There’s a sight 
in knowin’ what to do with what you’ve got,” 
she declared, as she snipped and pared. “It 
aint alius them as spends most who look best 
An’ there’s a deal in th’ way things are worn. 
An’ these war times folks are havin’ things as 


BLACK CUPID 


159 

never had ’em afore. Look at Mike Cliff’s 
wife!” 

“Louisa has hoops, and she wore a silk dress 
to school one day, but she never wore it again. 
I think Miss Sadwell or Mrs. Thorne spoke to 
her,” said Josephine. 

“An’ so she’s in Miss Sadwell’s school,” said 
Grandma. “Well, well!” 

“She’s not going to stay, the girls say,” ex- 
plained Josephine. “They say she’s going 
away to a boarding-school. She writes won- 
derful compositions. They’re like pieces in 
books.” 

“Mmmmmm!” grunted Grandma. “Years 
ago her mother worked for me. She was a 
willing creature, and pretty, but stupid.” 

“Well, Louisa and her cousin, Ellen Joyce, 
have way-up compositions,” said Josephine. 
“Even the big girls can’t do better.” 

“The Joyces are the new factory men,” ex- 
plained Miss Pratt. “They came from Salina.” 

“M — well!” sniffed Grandma, “if she that 
was Nora Flynn’s daughter writes way-up com- 
positions, perhaps she gets ’em out of her own 
head, and perhaps she don’t. Though if 
there’s anything crooked, it isn’t Nora’s doing. 
If Nora was stupid, she was good.” 

“This aint an easy world. Miss Dobard,” 
said Miss Pratt, after spitting out a surprising 


i6o JOSEPHINE 

number of pins to talk unhampered. ^‘But I’ve 
noticed that smartness, like composition 
writing now, crops up where you’d least expect 
it.” 

The first division read their compositions 
the third Friday after the term began. Joseph- 
ine wore the made-over all-wool delaine. It 
was a rosy lavender, dotted with medallions in 
black, green and white. Touches of white silk 
at throat and wrists, with frills of delicate 
lace, made it becoming, and the neat white 
apron covering it made the whole costume 
suitable. The subject of her essay was ‘‘Hope,” 
and she closed as follows, — “Uncle Cupid, 
though black, was wise, and he used always to 
chide me, when I said, ‘I hope to do this or 
that.’ He said that instead of hoping, I ought 
to spend all my time and strength making my 
hope come true. He said hoping and wishing 
are of no account, unless they set you at work.” 
Josephine’s voice broke into a quaver, as she 
sat down, and Miss Sadwell waited several 
seconds before calling the next reader, Louisa 
Cliff. Louisa also wore a new dress, a fine 
blue silk-warped chalfie, which set off her fair- 
ness. Around her slim neck was a wide gold 
chain, in delicate filagree, and from it hung a 
large locket set with pearls and sapphires. 
Her fair hair was tied back with a blue velvet 


BLACK CUPID i6i 

ribbon. She blinked nervously as she opened 
her paper, and a vivid color came suddenly 
to her high cheek-bones. Her subject was 
“Books,” and she read in a very childish voice, 
often mispronouncing her words, while Miss 
Sadwell’s grave face became more and more 
stern. Ellen Joyce was the next reader. Her 
frock was rose color and white and much 
trimmed with rose-colored satin ribbon, and 
she also wore a wide gold chain, and a locket 
on which winked a diamond. No girls attend- 
ing Miss Sadwell’s school had ever been 
dressed so handsomely, even Miss Dorothy 
Biles, who had gone away to Mt. Holyoke the 
year before, and who was the apple of her 
grandfather’s sad old eyes, had never appeared 
at school in frocks so expensive as those worn 
by the cousins. Ellen’s topic was “Sympathy,” 
and as she read, Josephine felt herself now 
shivering, now burning, for she recognized the 
essay as one in a red muslin-covered book ban- 
ished to the woodshed chamber, and bearing 
in gilt on its cover, the legend, “Ladies’ Keep- 
sake.” When Ellen sat down, there was a 
curious stillness for some minutes. Then Miss 
Sadwell said gravely, “Miss Louisa, define, if 
you please, ^graphic.’ ” 

Louisa rose, her face white as milk, her eyes 
burning, “Why, it means — I — ” There was a 


i 62 JOSEPHINE 

long wait, then, overcome with misery, Louisa 
sank into her seat. 

“Miss Ellen, please to define ‘bourne,’ ” 
commanded Miss Sadwell gently. 

Ellen Joyce rose in her place, the color 
coming and going in her cheeks, her eyes blaz- 
ing. Her lips moved, but no sound came from 
them. Suddenly she bent, drew a small red 
book from under her desk, and flung it toward 
the open window. Her aim was not good. 
The book took Josephine’s inkstand, overturn- 
ing it upon her new dress and the floor. The 
next moment Ellen Joyce rushed out of the 
room, banging the door behind her. 

“Young ladies, what we write looks like us,” 
said Miss Sadwell gravely. “It is impossible 
it should be otherwise. The words I asked 
these girls to define were in their essays. Tak- 
ing what does not belong to us, is stealing, and 
taking another’s thoughts, is a very mean sort 
of stealing, if there be grades in it.” 

“Oh, ma’am!” exclaimed Josephine, rising 
and pointing. 

Louisa Cliff was slipping to the floor. She 
had fainted. 


CHAPTER XXI 

THE LAWN FETE 

T he first time Captain McTavish was able 
to walk out, he went to see Madame 
Panalle, and, returning, he bought a Lincoln 
medal for Josephine. It was round and set in 
a gold-plated rim. On the back it held a pic- 
ture of Andrew Johnson. Grandma had given 
Josephine a fine gold necklace for her birthday. 
She hung the Lincoln medal upon it, and wore 
it constantly, for everyone had politics, and 
with all the noise of war, another turmoil was 
in progress, namely a Presidential election. 
Every week there were crowded meetings at 
Empire Hall. Gentlemen would assure the 
people with fiery gestures that the only way to 
bring peace to the distracted country was to 
re-elect President Lincoln, and other gentle- 
men the next night would declare that General 
McClellan was the only man who could save 
the nation from destruction. These meetings, 
no matter who spoke, or on what side, were 
always called, “to consider the state of the Na- 
tion.” Everybody who was able went. Even 
Grandma Dobard, who had long given up eve- 


i 64 JOSEPHINE 

ning entertainments, went always when it did 
not rain, and \vith her went Josephine and Ann 
Mary. “Sometime you’ll be glad to be able to 
say, you went to these affairs,” she assured the 
former. As for Ann Mary, she had a brother- 
in-law in the army, and when the three went 
home. Grandma could take her arm for the 
hill between her home and the hall. Every- 
thing became more and more expensive, and 
Manda Pratt had to be called in to repair the 
damage made by Ellen Joyce and the ink 
bottle. 

“It’s a mercy this delaine’s figured,” Manda 
declared. “Th’ pieces I set in won’t show to 
speak of, though for that matter folks are 
wearin’ pieced things that never had to afore, 
jus’ as others is wearin’ silks an’ satins, an’ 
jewelry, that’s had hard sleddin’ gettin’ calico. 
Think o’ Michael Cliff in th’ legislature! My 
suzzy!” 

“How did he get in. Miss Pratt?” demanded 
Josephine. “Who let him in?” 

“Don’t ask me. I don’t vote,” replied 
Manda. 

“I p’sume there’s voters as don’t know,” 
said Grandma. “We’ve come on strange 
times.” 

In July, a pop-eyed, withered little music 
teacher, with his withered little wife, had 



Josephine at once knelt down by Cupid s chair 






-1’ 


■ 






? V 


l■^•♦ 


•’ jy- 
.• ^ 






A» 


ll 


■if •,* 


i « 


V. ♦ 


u 


‘f/ ” 



♦ ’ f 






lit 


• • 


4- 

< -, 

. j-r' 


# " ' . 4.* I 

^ ;%7 




1^, 




>■; 


» • 



« t 

*. 




'.-i 


i « 


- V 

^ ^ . ' -v. i . rl» 

■» «. - j' - 

5 -. * ; . *• A w 



vr ^ 


f • 


•.. V*iC4i ^ r ♦ i . * .4 V^io^ 

- ‘ S • ■ 'St'ilf V " i*. - 

J _ .1 i* <; • 


"£• 


t 








"I 



- ./it 


-> 

.y 


■ t 


^ ■ i 

^ t JS 


. 1 
. , 'ii 


A 










1 - 

r- 


t 


« 

i*tur* 


-'^ IT 


U-: 


* >■ 


fit 







‘'S 


i*k.. 


, T >1 
. J> « * 





r^i 

r 


r>'^- y** 

1 *• ': V * '■ 

r 


if 


r . 




Vj ^ 




F.-» 


. » 


' 5^ - ^ 


*■ 

v 


f.^. '. . l»«. , • ' ‘ 

\ .> » . ' -••‘^ 'i , ‘ V’ i-.i* V# 

-'."■ - f.»L i: ■• 




t 


•» * '*1^ ’ ■ -o 4 ' , ‘ w f r 









‘ -j 


^ ‘ 


X jfr 


% < 

f i 


£ 


h:- 


:T 


THE LAWN FETE 165 

come from Utica, and proposed to the Ortho- 
dox church people to get up an entertainment 
with the aid of their young folks, and take half 
the receipts for their pay. The young people 
would receive training in part and choral sing- 
ing, and the Sunday-school library fund would 
be increased. 

The pretty operetta went off without a hitch, 
and with great financial success, and left 
many of the young folks still singing, notably 
Della Laprade, who not only sang the whole 
operetta, but invented some new airs all her 
own. 

“I can think of some words for that tune,” 
Josephine announced one recess, after Della 
had hummed through one of her inventions. 
“I believe we could get up an operetta that 
would pass muster with ‘The June Dream.’ ” 

“What fun!” said Bina Forrest. “Let me 
help.” 

The Seminary pupils had given an entertain- 
ment which they had called, “Readings and 
Tableaux,” in aid of the Sanitary Commission. 
Each church had either taken a special collec- 
tion, or had gotten up a fair to the same end. 
A three days’ fair was in preparation by the 
whole town, and Miss Sadwell, always alert to 
the doings of her pupils, even when they were 
not just under her eyes, began noticing the 


i66 JOSEPHINE 

group of laughing singers grouped among the 
lilacs during recess. 

^‘What play are you practising?” she asked 
Josephine one noon. have overheard some- 
thing very pretty for several days.” 

‘^Oh, it’s Della Laprade’s songs, or rather 
her tunes. We’ve made the verses,” replied 
Josephine, flushing to the roots of her hair. 

^^And where did Della find her tunes?” 

^^All in her own head. She made some of 
the verses. Della’s smart.” 

There was an instant’s silence broken only 
by Mr. Sadwell’s measured pacing up and 
down in the hall below, while making odd hiss- 
ing sounds by drawing air through his teeth. 
Miss Sadwell’s delicate face had settled into the 
hard lines Josephine had come to know meant 
disbelief. 

“I’ve been thinking our school might do 
something for the Sanitary Commission,” Miss 
Sadwell spoke slowly, and drummed nerv- 
ously on the table with her slim fingers. “A 
lawn fete could be managed, and if I knew the 
real authorship of those songs — ” 

“I’ve told you all about them,” said Joseph- 
ine, her tongue suddenly feeling thick, and her 
body shaking with anger. “You’d better ask 
Della.” Another moment she darted away and 
into the street. 


THE LAWN FETE 167 

Bina Forrest had been waiting for Josephine 
in one of the smaller rooms, and had overheard 
all the talk. “It’s just as Josephine said,” she 
volunteered, coming into the hall. “Della’s 
very clever. The girls know it better than you. 
Miss Sadwell. And she isn’t to blame for 
her — ^complexion. People north are very hard 
upon black folks, for all their fine talk.” 

“My dear!” protested the teacher. “Young 
people do not understand.” She sank back in 
her chair, and passed her hand wearily over 
her forehead, then added, “I don’t know but 
you are right about Della. You see I remem- 
ber her mother very well, and so feel resentful 
that Della’s grandparents did not take better 
care of her mother. Don’t ever forget your 
life is interknit with other lives, and that you 
have no right to follow your inclination when 
to do so casts a burden upon others. When 
Della’s mother married a man of mixed blood, 
she should have been reminded that her chil- 
dren would bear the mark of Africa.” 

Before the school assembled for the after- 
noon session, something terrible happened. 
After more than twenty-five years of mild 
strangeness, Philetus Sadwell suddenly became 
violent, and after striking down his aged 
mother he ran down the street and jumped into 
Fern river just below the falls. When the 


i68 JOSEPHINE 

school again opened, Miss Sadwell had given 
over her work for a time to Mrs. Thorne, who 
entered into the plans for a lawn fete with zest, 
and helped the girls arrange Della’s songs, and 
their verses, with intelligent interest. 

Between East and West Ferndale runs a 
small, but deep and rapid river. For rea- 
sons long forgotten there has been a keen 
rivalry between the two halves of the town 
since the first factory was built on the west 
side. Being the older. East Ferndale has the 
older and handsomer churches, the post-office, 
the Seminary, the flour mills and the ceme- 
tery. West Ferndale has all the factories, the 
railway station, and the fair ground. After 
Ferndale became the county-seat the West 
side put up a brisk fight to secure the court 
house and the jail, but was defeated. The 
handsomest of the old homes are, of course, on 
the East side. Some of them face the river. 
As if to spite them, the “Colonial” mansion 
building for O’Brien Joyce was on the West 
bluff, as was also the Italian villa of yellow 
brick going up for Michael Cliff, and the bluff 
once the pride of the East-siders, so beauti- 
fully did it close in plumy green their view 
of Fern river, was cut down abruptly to 
make room for the Joyce coal yards, and a 
spur from the P. D. & W. railway. A brick 


THE LAWN FETE 169 

wall shut in the Joyce and Cliff property. A 
hideous mass of raw earth and rock loomed 
where once had been aspens, sumac, alders, 
hobblebush, brambles, great willow herb, milk- 
weed, monkey flowers, cardinal flowers, and 
ferns of many varieties. The coal sheds bore in 
yellow letters two feet long, the legend, ‘^An- 
thracite and Bituminous Coal.” As if this 
were not enough, a huge billboard was 
fastened against the bank, and on it was 
painted, “Use Sneed’s for that Tired Feeling.” 
That the owners of the property across the 
river should resent this change in their view 
is not wonderful. Nor is it strange some old 
residents sniffed disdainfully at the airs of some 
of the West-siders when, like Michael Cliff, 
they drove by in barouches gaily gilded, their 
trace chains of clanking silver, or, like the 
Joyces, with servants in livery. It was this 
situation that Josephine, with the help of Bina 
Forrest and Jerusha Brierly, had woven into a 
comedy to be sungj to Della Laprade’s tunes. 


CHAPTER XXII 

JOSEPHINE WRITES A PLAY 

T he shivering aspens were turning orange 
yellow, and the swamp maples flaming 
red. If Miss Sadwell’s young pupils were to 
give their musical comedy out of doors, it must 
be at once, Mrs. Thorne said. If anything 
were lacking to awaken popular interest in the 
war, it was supplied by the return of Kilgore 
Pardee, the doctor’s only child. He had been 
reported missing, then as taken prisoner and 
sent to Belle Isle. How he had escaped and 
reached the north he could not tell. Lean, 
yellow, the specter of a man, he had brought 
out of the horrors he had endured one thought 
only. Something threatened from the South. 
The executors of the old doctor’s will had 
asked Mrs. Thorne, whose son Pardee would 
be principal heir in case of the death of the 
doctor’s one child, to occupy the old home- 
stead. “It would be better for the property,” 
they said. It was well she had acceded to their 
request, and that she had retained “Mrs. Jo- 
sephus Pickett,” otherwise “Black Charlotte,” 
and long the old doctor’s cook, in her old quar- 


JOSEPHINE WRITES A PLAY 171 

ters. But even the best of care in the pleasant 
old rooms he had known all his youth could 
not restore the mind shattered by suffering. 
The first time Colonel Kilgore Pardee was 
able to walk, he demanded a musket, and in 
default of one, shouldered a short clothes-pole, 
which seemed to his disordered fancy of the 
right size and weight, and making his way to 
the corner stood there two hours facing the 
south. Thereafter, until his death in the fierce 
cold of February, he daily mounted guard 
against the threatening something, “coming 
from the south.” He had been a splendid fig- 
ure, and had filled his father’s heart with pride 
by his work at Harvard, and then in the Law 
School. Ferndale had expected to be no end 
proud of him. Now it ached with pity, and 
burned with anger, as well, at the cause of this 
ruin. 

On the morning of the Saturday chosen, 
folk streamed into town from every point 
of the compass. The roads were fine, the 
day perfect. The performance was to be 
in the public park. A stout, high fence sur- 
rounded it, built when cows roamed the streets. 
There were turnstiles at each corner. Grand- 
father Dodson, with the help of his son James, 
just home from lecturing upon “phrenology,” 
contrived a stage with a protection at the back. 


172 JOSEPHINE 

If anyone had tried sneaking in without paying 
at some one of the guarded turnstiles, the sight 
of Kilgore Pardee slowly pacing his self- 
imposed beat would have sent him back. Help 
came from the most unexpected quarters. The 
Hon. Michael Cliff sent word that the town 
band should play, as often as desired, such 
music as Mrs. Thorne was pleased to select, of 
course at his expense. Miss Sally Peck, just 
home from Miss Williard’s School at Troy, 
volunteered to play accompaniments, quite 
regardless of the sympathy felt for the South 
by her father and uncles. Miss Vredder of- 
fered to help with the costumes. Pardee 
Thorne and a dozen boys of his age offered to 
assist in selling the sandwiches and coffee that 
were to be offered for refreshment after the 
performance, and the sandwiches and coffee 
were donated, also the sugar and cream neces- 
sary for the latter. Seats had to be found 
far beyond the number provided, and at last 
obliging young people sat on the fence, 
smiling and looking not unlike monster 
chickens. 

At last the opening chorus, all clad in white, 
mounted the platform, and, dividing, faced 
each other. Miss Sally Peck had been playing 
a charming prelude of Chopin and delicately 
found her way into the music of the comedy. 


JOSEPHINE WRITES A PLAY 173 

quite as if Chopin’s prelude had been written 
to introduce it. The piano was Miss Hannah 
Biles’ grand, taken bodily into the park that very 
morning, and placed just in front of the stage. 
Then the two groups of singers, exactly mim- 
icking each other’s pointing fingers and smirks, 
sang the following: 


“The rainbows in our skies 
Are brighter far 
Than rainbows are, — 

The other side the river. 

And at the fairies over there, 
Their pedigree and lack of it. 
And manners that do smack of it. 
All their motions. 

And their notions, 

Make us shiver, shiver, shiver. 

We point with pride, 

To our own side 
Fern river.” 


The place of the play was supposed to be 
Fairyland. Some of the more thoughtful 
fairies would close all places where liquor was 
sold. Some urged new paving for the streets. 
Others wanted better gas. Some wanted a new 
library building. The one they were using 
belonged to the village, and held the post-office 
and various public offices, and was ‘^no larger 
than a decent chicken-coop,” so one exasperated 


174 JOSEPHINE 

fairy of a literary turn pleaded. Another 
group wanted an ^^Old Fairies’ Home,” for 
even fairies grow old and feeble. In vain, 
public-spirited fairies paced up and down, 
arguing, and urging the wisdom of their sug- 
gestions and plans. No East-sider would listen 
to anything being done for the West side, nor 
would any West-sider hear to improvements on 
the East side. At last, defeated and irritated, 
Josephine sang: 

“A body would think 
A town with a river 
Would be firmly united 
And never divided, 

Aye, proud beyond measure 
Because of its treasure. 

Nobody would think 
A river delightful 
Would make fairies spiteful 
Or enviously greedy. 

A body would think 
They would keep it all neatly 
And hedge it with flowers 
And shrubs smelling sweetly 
’Stead o’ dumping in filth 
To make it grow weedy. 

And rending and tearing 
Its banks without caring 
For aught save some pelf. 

Oh, a body should think 
Of someone beside self! 


JOSEPHINE WRITES A PLAY 175 

And if I were Fern river 
I’d run, and I’d run, 

Till I ran quite away. 

And wherever I ran to. 

I’d hide me, and stay. 

For I’m tired. 

Much tired 
O’ Fern river.” 

This provoked much applause and laughter, 
and some odd looks were exchanged, and so 
did the dialogue following, in which a fairy 
showed the world how all her faults and fail- 
ures were caused by someone else, to which a 
chorus glibly answered — 

“It’s j’ust th’ same with us.” 

Another fairy explained why she always 
contradicted people, because she was always 
right, and yet another fairy explained why she 
was unwilling to do even a small favor for 
anyone without a reward. Then the following 
was sung, first by Josephine and Bina Forrest 
for the East side, and then by Rusha Brierly 
and her sister, Fidelia Maria, for the West 
side. Then all four sang it together: 

“Just look at us! 

We are the first. 

The tiptop aristocracy 
Of Fairytown. 


176 JOSEPHINE 

Everybody bow, low, low down 
And watch us smile or frown. 

Only keep your eyes on us. 

We are Society.” 

This was followed by a laughter chorus. 
The last chorus was the best musically, every- 
body said, and was as follows : 


“Fairies all, w*e lay aside 
All our vanities and pride. 

Each side our pretty river 
Work we will, and with a will 
Fairy town to make the best 
Little village east or west. 

No matter what the weather, 

Faithfully well work together 
For all things good. 

As fairies should. 

Well work, well work together.” 

“Well, well, well! What eyes the young- 
sters have, to be sure!” exclaimed old Peter 
Biles, who, since the death of his two sons, had 
suffered from a strange weakness in the legs, 
that made walking difficult. He had made 
them wheel him over in a chair he had 
just received from Utica. “Did someone 
tell me Paul Dobard’s little girl invented 
this?” 

“Not all,” said Mr. Jonas Peck, who hap- 


JOSEPHINE WRITES A PLAY 177 

pened to be near. ‘‘My niece Sally tells me it 
began with some airs Dodson’s granddaughter 
invented. She, of course, had help.” 

“Very little, if any,” put in Mrs. Thorne, 
who had just come up. “Della Laprade is 
gifted in music, and has a beautiful voice, 
though she will only appear in the choruses. 
Josephine, however, deserves the credit of the 
general idea of the comedy, and the best of the 
verses.” 

“Well, well!” said old Peter, nodding. “So 
Della is a genius. She shall have a chance. 
I’ll see she has it.” 

When the comedy proper closed, the whole 
school sang, “Rally ’Round the Flag,” and then 
the band played, “The Battle Cry of Free- 
dom,” and “When This Cruel War Is Over,” 
and “Old Ros’n the Bow,” and, to close, “John 
Brown,” the crowd singing the words, and 
making a great volume of sound. O’Brien 
Joyce, who had given the band their new uni- 
forms, felt so flattered by their appearance, he 
ordered they be given coflee and sandwiches 
at his expense, after which they again played. 
This time it was dance tunes, as “Money 
Musk,” and “I Wish You would Marry Me 
Now.” But no one felt like dancing, save per- 
haps a young horse or two. The papers sell- 
ing on the street told of a battle in Virginia 


178 JOSEPHINE 

likely to bring sorrow to more than one home 
in Ferndale and its vicinity. 

That evening, when Mrs. Thorne and Sally 
Peck counted the receipts of the day, they 
found four copper tokens, a counterfeit two- 
dollar bill, and one hundred and ninety-four 
dollars and three cents. 

“I don’t s’pose anybody meant to cheat with 
that bogus bill,” said Uncle Caleb Peck, stick- 
ing out his under lip, as he always did when 
considering something, and rubbing his nose. 
“Folks in th’ country can’t know th’ chicanin’ 
goin’ on in towns, women folks specially. It 
ought ’o be an even two hunderd. Those chil- 
dren did well.” 

“They deserve a lot of credit,” admitted 
Uncle Jonas. 

“I say, boys, le’s make it an even two hun- 
dred, so they c’n have th’ three cents for post- 
age,” said Mr. Zenas Peck, Sally’s father. “Of 
course I’ve never sympathized with Abe 
Lincoln, but that’s neither here nor there. 
This is for sufferin’.” He laid two dollars 
in what were known as “shinplasters” on the 
table. 

“Umah!” grunted Uncle Caleb, as he gave 
his two dollars, and then quietly added an- 
other bit of paper worth ten cents to pay for 
the postal order. 


JOSEPHINE WRITES A PLAY 179 

Two weeks later the Young Ladies of Miss 
Sadwell’s school received the formal receipt 
and thanks of the Sanitary Commission for two 
hundred dollars. 


CHAPTER XXIII 

THE INVISIBLE VIRGINIA CARTER 

I T was a bitter winter, beginning early and 
staying late. The snow heaped itself over 
the tops of the fences, and stood in a glittering 
wall between the roadway and the pavement 
which was kept clear by a rigidly-enforced 
law. The high falls of Fern river, rarely 
frozen over, were silent this year under heavy 
veils of ice. But the skating was perfect, and 
in a pert little hat with brown feathers, and a 
warm jacket of brown wool dotted over with 
white spots like snowflakes, Josephine learned 
to skate. Joel Ladd was her teacher. He also 
taught Bina Forrest, with whom Josephine 
became more and more intimate, with the re- 
sult that Virginia Carter began to fade out of 
her mind, though, of course, there were times 
when she became as vivid as ever. Sometimes 
Flo Leet came, expensively dressed in blue 
broadcloth and wearing white furs, and 
Madame Panalle came when it was very 
keen, wearing a homespun costume, gray as 
a wasp’s nest, and having on her head a 
knitted cap of crimson yarn. The skates 


INVISIBLE VIRGINIA CARTER i8i 

Madame buckled on her good-sized feet 
quirled up in front like monster watch-springs, 
but no boy could excel her in swiftness and 
grace on ice, and she and Joel Ladd had a 
notable knowledge of birds that dare the north- 
ern winter, nuthatches, both white-breasted and 
red-breasted, chickadees, various woodpeckers, 
blue jays, and occasional crows, and twice she 
pointed out a little flock of snow buntings, and 
at another time an adventuring pine siskin, 
and, to crown all, a large flock of the red 
cross-bills that German legend and our own 
Longfellow have immortalized. Once she 
pointed out to Josephine a brown creeper, and 
once Joel showed Josephine a flock of Lap- 
land longspurs picking up the grain swept 
from the barn, and leaving odd marks of 
their long hind claws in the snow. It was 
after a delightful skim up the river with Ma- 
dame and a little group of her pupils, that a 
slim, pimply young man accosted Flo Leet. 
What he said, no one knew, but they skated 
away together for a few minutes. Then Flo 
circled back, and begged Madame to take her 
home. The next morning she was not at 
school, nor yet the next day, and that evening 
when Josephine tapped at the Leet door, Mrs. 
Leet, very pale, and worn, and old, opened it 
but a crack to say Flo was very, very ill. Be- 


i 82 JOSEPHINE 

fore the week was over, it was whispered that 
the strange young man had claimed to be Flo’s 
brother, and had told her the people with 
whom she lived had adopted her. She had 
been too overcome to go home alone, and when 
she learned she was indeed adopted, had be- 
come delirious after repeated fainting spells. 
She had studied hard, and was not strong, and 
before a fortnight was over, something in the 
proud, intense little heart and head gave way, 
and in spite of all the wise doctor, telegraphed 
for from Utica, could do, she died. From the 
first Grandma Dobard was much excited by 
her illness, and when, on Sunday morning, 
Ann Mary brought in the sad news with the 
second helping of muffins. Grandma became 
so pale the good serving-woman was scared. 

“You ought to have a thorough course of 
something,” she declared. “You’d better let 
me bring you some o’ th’ dandelion wine I put 
up last spring.” 

“Nonsense!” replied Grandma stiffly, and 
regardless of Ann Mary’s feelings. “I’m quite 
well. But — ^Josephine, please to step in my 
room when you have finished breakfast.” 

A coal fire was snapping in the white marble 
fireplace. Josephine walked up to it and 
spread out her hands, smiling at Grandma, 
who stood awaiting her. 


INVISIBLE VIRGINIA CARTER 183 

The old lady stepped forward quickly and 
put her arms about Josephine, who could feel 
that her grandmother trembled. 

“Grandma, is it that you want to tell me 
something?” said Josephine gently, and putting 
up her arms to the old lady’s neck. 

“Yes, dear child. This dreadful affair has 
made me feel that there’s nothing safe or 
happy in this world that is not founded on 
truth.” 

“Is it something you do not want me to 
know?” 

“I haven’t wanted you to know, especially 
since I’ve grown to love you so,” sobbed 
Grandma. “But truth is best.” 

“If it’s about our being step, don’t mind. 
Gran’ dear.” Josephine rumpled Grandma’s 
fine lace collar forgetfully. “We aren’t to 
blame, and I love you — a — million if you are 
step.” 

“Who? — when?” stammered the old lady, 
tears blinding her. 

“I don’t remember who was first,” said Jo- 
sephine easily. “You see folks thought I knew. 
No one did it a-purpose.” 

“And you’ve never lisped a word to me!” 
The old lady held Josephine away from her 
and scanned her face. 

“Why should I, when you were trying to be 


i 84 JOSEPHINE 

my really truly grandma, and are all the 
grandma I have anyhow? Then — I was trying 
to be really truly, too.” Josephine spoke quite 
truthfully. Grandma and her exacting ways 
had ceased to ruffle her as at first. 

A reserved and proud woman was Grandma, 
and speech was difficult, so she pressed Joseph- 
ine closely in her arms, kissed her, and bade 
her sit down. 

^‘And there is something else I must speak 
about,” she continued, after a moment. “Please 
tell me. Who is Virginia Carter?” 

Josephine turned blood-red, and stared at 
Grandma a few moments in silence. “IVe al- 
ways had her,” she replied at last. “You see 
there had to be somebody.” 

Grandma drew her chair close and put her 
arm about Josephine’s shoulders. 

“I see,” she assented. “It was lonely out 
West.” 

“All the people at the post were grown up. 
Johnny Knox came with his father sometimes, 
but he was a boy. The Colonel had twin girls 
way off East here in school. I s’pose I made 
Virginia up. First I knew I had her. I reckon 
I’ve always had her.” 

There was a long silence broken only by the 
crackle of the fire, the odd sounds made in the 
works of the French clock, and an occasional 


INVISIBLE VIRGINIA CARTER 185 

creak from Grandma’s rocking-chair. think 
you’d better not mention her outside,” 
Grandma said at last. “Ferndale people don’t 
know about army posts, and might not under- 
stand.” 

always talk things over with her. She 
always gives me good advice, and helps me be 
the way I want to be.” 

“All the same I’d not speak of her,” per- 
sisted Grandma. “Folks are just as they are, 
and you can’t change ’em.” 

The wisdom of Grandma’s advice Josephine 
learned the very next day, when, forgetfully, 
she spoke of Virginia before Laura Shaw, who 
called out loudly, “What a fabricator you are, 
Josephine Dobard! There’s no such girl in 
town.” 

The week of Flo Leet’s funeral Mrs. Peck 
sickened among her dusty rags and died, Dr. 
Kendrick said, of “poison,” though the papers 
called it pneumonia. The next day Mrs. 
Thorne carefully explained to the school how 
dust may hold myriads of atoms, deadly to 
human beings. But few people paid attention 
to these new-fangled notions. Old Peter Biles, 
and then Mrs. Vandercook “went home,” Dr. 
Vandercook said, and not long after he, too, 
“went home.” 

Grandma made no comment when Josephine 


i86 JOSEPHINE 

announced that she wanted to sit with the 
mourners at the old minister’s funeral. “It’s 
been a lonesome winter for all the fun I’ve 
had studying and skating, and now it will be 
lonesomer,” she said. 

“You have that child wear a black string 
around her neck wid a sixpence hung on it,” 
counseled Ann Mary, who had come in, un- 
heralded by a rap, as her hands were full of 
parts of one of Grandma’s best caps. “An’ 
have her carry a bit o’ gum camphor in her 
pocket besides. It’s good standin’ off catchin’ 
things.” 

“And there’s no knowing how long th’ 
fever’ll stay on The Flats,” assented Grandma. 

“No, ma’am, there aint, but ye may be cer- 
tain th’ black-hearted pigs as owns th’ rat holes 
thim canalers rints ’ll niver be th’ wans as 
catches what th’ rat holes breeds,” replied Ann 
Mary, with strong disapproval. “Sometimes I 
wonders if dacent folk’s responsible for lavin’ 
th’ pigs to do as they plase. I do that.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 
“scarlet fever here” 

^^^"T^HERE’S a big red card on the Dodson 
A house, and it says in black letters — 
‘Scarlet Fever Here. Keep Out!’ and it’s 
Della, and she’s dreadfully sick,” Josephine 
breathlessly announced, when she returned 
from Dr. Vandercook’s funeral. 

“But what do you think? I saw Mrs. Biles 
and Hannah going in!” 

“That card’s some of young Kendrick’s do- 
ings, and’s for young folks,” said Grandma 
easily. “Of course, neighbors’ll go in, those 
who neighbor with the Dodsons.” 

“But Grandma, Mrs. Thorne says the fever 
can be carried in clothes, so it’s really unsafe 
for anyone to call there.” 

“Dear me! What are we coming to?” 
Grandma’s voice was irritable. “It seems to 
me someone thinks he’s discovered something 
every day that makes life more difficult. Only 
yesterday Hannah Biles was in here, and she 
said those awful, wheezing, snuffling colds 
your grandfather had in late summer were 
caused by ragweed, or perhaps it was may- 


i88 JOSEPHINE 

weed, and she said typhoid fever comes from 
bad water, and that it may come from milk 
with the germs in it. It seems there’s some- 
thing like a seed, I suppose, they call a germ. 
It don’t sound reasonable to me — ” 

‘^Sure, ma’am, it’s a tiligrim,” said Ann 
Mary, who had come in without knocking, a 
sure sign she was stirred up. “An’ ma’am, 
th’ by’s waitin’, if there be an answer.” 

The old lady sank back in her chair, but 
Josephine sprang up, and seizing the envelope, 
tore it open. “Start this morning with the body 
of Major-General Worden. (Signed) Paul 
Dobard,” was what she read aloud. 

Without a word Josephine turned and ran 
up stairs to her own room where she dropped 
face downwards upon her bed. The world 
seemed to whirl around her. Even her own 
father had not always entered into her small 
interests with the sympathy and comprehen- 
sion of her papa Worden. Perhaps because 
there wasi not upon him the same responsibility, 
there had been between them a gaiety and fel- 
lowship not in her relation to her own father. 
As she lay there rigid all the happy times she 
owed to her papa Worden passed through her 
thoughts like a panorama. And she had failed 
through her carelessness to bid him good-bye. 
It was impossible to think of his going, as she 


^‘SCARLET FEVER HERE” 189 

thought of tender, wise, old Dr. Vandercook, 
now with his beautiful old wife and God, to 
whose service he had given his life. Papa 
Worden had joined Mamma Worden, to be 
sure, but her recollection of him was of a 
strong man full of fire and power. It did not 
surprise her that he had become a major- 
general. She wondered that he had not be- 
come commander-in-chief. And she had not 
answered his last kind note. Among his many 
cares he had found time to write to her. But 
she had thought herself too busy, with her 
music and work for the prizes, to take the time 
she had resolved should be given her next 
letter, since in that last note he had playfully 
admonished her to stop spelling which 
^Vitch.” Her head throbbed. Her eyes felt 
dry and burning. Though the register sent up 
a steady current of hot air she shivered. All 
that she had been striving for seemed to lessen in 
importance. If she won a prize, if she, ' 4 id well 
in music. Papa Worden would not know and 
tell her his gladness. Grandma toiled softly 
up stairs, tapped, and receiving no answer, 
peered in, then went away. She did not quite 
understand the tender tie between Josephine 
and this second father, and feared to speak. A 
little later Ann Mary came, and dropping on 
her knees by the bed, put a warm, comforting 


190 JOSEPHINE 

arm about Josephine’s small body. “It’s not 
an aisy world, darlint,” she quavered, her voice 
running over less than half tones, making an 
odd suggestion of the chromatic scale. “It’s 
mesilf knows. Whin I was eight me feyther 
hurt his inside delvin’, an’ soon after he died 
quick like you’d blow out a candle. Aye. He 
was a kind man, was feyther. Whin he’d put 
his arm about ye, ye’d feel nothin’ mathered. 
He’d make all right. Well, an’ about thin 
mither had a cough, an’ there was th’ rint, an’ 
th’ babby, an’ me sister Sarah, an’ Mikey, an’ 
me. No rint, no roof’s th’ rule in Ireland. 
Th’ feyther’d be going to England and Scot- 
land in th’ harvest time an’ ’d bring back eight 
or nine pound till that last year, whin he 
hurted himsilf. ’Twas a poor place, an’ a 
poor livin’, but, praise God, it’s folks makes 
a home, an’ I niver sinsed I wasn’t havin’ quite 
iverything till th’ feyther wint. It was three 
months after th’ funeral we was put out an’ all 
all our bit things on a barry, an’ we started to 
walk to me uncle’s at Geesala, hopin’ he’d take 
us in. It’s slow goin’ wid weak or short legs 
an’ pushin’ a barry wid a cough an’ a babby. 
Night found us on th’ moor, an’ there come a 
sea turn wid a cold rain, an’ afore th’ morn, 
wid no priest nor prayer, me mither wint. 
God rist her soul in glory!” Ann Mary’s voice 


^‘SCARLET FEVER HERE’’ 191 

had risen in pitch and had become a wail as 
she recalled that time of suffering and grief. 
‘^Aye, it’s not an aisy world. I learned that 
young.” 

Josephine turned her head. Ann Mary had 
made her see the pictures she herself saw in 
memory, and she hid her face in that good 
woman’s warm neck, at which Ann Mary drew 
her closer as she continued, ^‘He was a brave 
man, your feyther Worden. It was Joel Ladd 
was tellin’ as how he won his honors on th’ bat- 
tle-field, an’ that his men loved him. Aye, child, 
it’s great to have had th’ love o’ such as him! 
God give him peace, an’ may th’ heavens be 
his bed!” Ann Mary crossed herself and 
paused long enough to whisper a prayer. De- 
vout Catholic, she held that people not of her 
faith needed her prayers far more than those 
of her own, who, of course, had a right to 
them. ^‘It’s a proud child you should be th’ 
day, an’ thankful. He loved ye. Wan had but 
to see him lookin’ at ye. An’ he was your own 
feyther’s dearest friend. Mind ye remimber 
that, dear! You are all himsilf has in th’ 
world now.” 

Ann Mary’s words and presence brought the 
relief of tears to Josephine, and she wept con- 
vulsively until Ann Mary, aided by Daphne, 
who had come directly she had learned of 


192 JOSEPHINE 

General Worden’s death, undressed her, and 
after insisting she take a little broth, somehow 
crooned and rubbed her to sleep. 

That night, while the cold made the roofs 
bang and sheeted the windows with frost, over 
the way Della Laprade, hopelessly ill from the 
first, died, and her agonized old grandfather 
followed her within the hour. Something 
deep down in Grandma Dobard was stirred, 
when Ann Mary brought the news to her bed- 
side along with her breakfast. She had gone 
to school with Martha Dodson, though she had 
not crossed her threshold in almost forty years. 
Rising quickly, she cut every rose from her 
cherished bush in the dining-room, and select- 
ing certain pots and bottles of jelly and cordial, 
she hurried over to her childhood friend. It 
was almost noon when, worn and agitated, she 
returned. Her bedroom fire was freshly plen- 
ished, and from beside it Josephine rose and 
greeted her with outspread arms. They held 
each other a moment. Then Josephine, bur- 
rowing if possible deeper into Grandma’s cash- 
mere gown, whispered, “I’ve missed you 
dreadful.” 

“And oh, how glad I am to have you!” 
cried Grandma, her lips white. 

Though she had never admitted it even to 
Ann Mary, strange weaknesses and faintness 


^‘SCARLET FEVER HERE” 193 

overtook Grandma occasionally, when for the 
moment the world floated away. The fatigue 
of the morning lay heavily upon her, but she 
would not acknowledge it. The wind had 
shifted and it had begun to snow as the day 
advanced. 

“You, child, had best lie down,” she coun- 
seled. “Mrs. Thorne will come directly after 
school, and she will sit with me.” 

“But, Grandma, I want to sit up, and to be 
with you, and to meet father.” Josephine 
used the word “father” by intention. The rela- 
tion had become too close and too solemn for 
the more childish “papa.” “I want to be right 
here.” So they sat huddling close. Grandma 
in her own easy chair, Josephine at her feet in 
the small chair that had once belonged to her 
vanished half aunt. Utter weariness overcame 
both, for Josephine was tired by her grief, and 
so it happened Dr. Dobard arrived, and the 
long parlor received the casket in which lay 
his dearest friend, before they wakened. 

“I thought I’d meet you, father dear,” 
sobbed Josephine, when she suddenly woke to 
find her father bending over her. “But I’m 
last. I think I must have a gift for being 
last.” 

Bronzed, his dark hair and beard two-thirds 
white, lean and hollow-eyed, the Doctor gazed 


194 JOSEPHINE 

at Josephine, unmindful of her words. “Dear 
little girl,” he said to himself. “My little girl 
who is soon to be a woman!” 

Major-General Worden was laid beside his 
kindred in the small burial-ground at Pompey 
Hill. The snow was deep, and the grave was 
made with picks. Zekle Althouse and Simon 
Dodson insisted on going that the General 
might have a fitting musical salute. At the 
moment the coffin was lowered the sun came 
out with dazzling brightness. Then came a 
wind to pierce the bones that went quite to the 
marrow of the two elderly musicians. 

Spring came suddenly, as the wise ones had 
said it would, after such a bitter winter, and in 
a fortnight the snow was gone save in sheltered 
nooks. It was too late for Zekle and Simon. 
They died within a few hours of each other, 
and a service for the two was held in the big 
Orthodox church. 

“I want to go. Grandma,” Josephine in- 
sisted at noon. “I know those examples at the 
back of the arithmetic must be studied, but I’d 
not feel right not to go to this funeral.” 

“But, child, you didn’t know ’em,” protested 
Grandma. “I don’t want you to get in a habit 
of going to funerals. Folks do get such a 
habit. There’s reason in all things.” 

“But, Grandma, their paying proper respect 


“SCARLET FEVER HERE^ 


to my papa Worden killed ’em. Their going 
up to Pompey Hill to do ^taps’ for him was 
like the poor woman’s ointment on the blessed 
Saviour’s feet.” 

“Those men have acted noble and sensible 
since they come home from soldiering,” ad- 
mitted Grandma. “Althouse went right back 
to makin’ pickles, though who buys pickles is 
beyond me, and Dodson went back to Sam 
Harrison to tailor.” 

“And you needn’t worry about my getting 
into a habit of going to funerals,” went on Jo- 
sephine. “Inside I hate to go, for I love to 
feel all skippy and happy in my heart. When 
I go, it’s ’cause I just have to, or feel mean.” 

“I can’t let you feel mean,” said Grandma, 
“but just now I’m anxious. Bina Forrest is 
down with scarlet fever. Perhaps there’s 
something in these new-fangled ideas about its 
going in clothes.” 

“I ought to tell you something.” Josephine 
grew red, as she went on. “Bina said it was 
pagan not to bid Della good-bye. She said she 
bade her dog good-bye after it was shot for 
being mad. She thinks black folks are just a 
kind of animal, a beast that can talk. All the 
same she was fairer than anyone about Della, 
and has always praised her, and said she was not 
to blame for the black dab in her, as she wasn’t. 


196 JOSEPHINE 

Well, when we came along from school, she 
said, ‘Let’s go in and bid Della good-bye.’ ” 

“Josephine!” 

“And I said, ‘We ought to obey what the 
doctors say. Mrs. Thorne told us none of us 
must enter the Dodson house.’ She said, ‘You 
can stop at the gate if you are afraid. I’m 
going in,’ and go she did. Of course, I wasn’t 
going to take her dare, and I went. The 
people were all at lunch, and no one saw us. 
She turned back the cloth on Della’s face, and 
oh, she looked beautiful, and Bina was bending 
to kiss her, when I caught her, and said, ‘You 
kiss her, and I’ll yell.’ I think I looked pretty 
earnest, for she just said, ‘Good-bye, poor 
dear!’ and we left. I washed out my nose and 
mouth with camphor, and put on another dress 
that afternoon, and I told Bina she ought to 
do the same thing, but I don’t think she did, 
for she’s as obstinate as a government mule, as 
they say.” 

“Land o’ man!” exclaimed Grandma, too 
excited to note her own or Josephine’s lan- 
guage. “What will I do if you have fever!” 

“I shan’t. Don’t you worry. Grandma. I 
simply shall not have it.” 


CHAPTER XXV 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TULIPS 

do you think, girls?” Laura 
▼ ▼ Shaw paused a moment while heads 
turned toward her. “Granny Ward’s awful 
sick, and out of her head quite, and she’s con- 
vinced, so she says, that Della Laprade broke 
off her tulips. You all remember when some- 
one just went in that yard and broke off every 
one, about.” 

“Rats!” Maria Fidelia Brierly shook an em- 
phatic forefinger at Laura. “It was never 
Della. She never went on that side of the 
street, she was that afraid of Granny. And 
she was afraid of the dark, too. She never 
went errands for her, you know.” 

“It’s easy accusing folks that can’t speak 
back,” said Agnes Benson, one of the newer 
pupils. Her father was pastor of the West 
side Methodist church. “My mother knows 
Della’s aunts, and she says, they say Della hap- 
pened to be in Utica when those tulips were 
picked.” 

“She never touched Granny Ward’s tulips,” 
began Josephine, who had listened to the talk 


198 JOSEPHINE 

with consternation. “I — ” Mrs. Thorne’s bell 
rang imperatively. The big clock on the 
Orthodox steeple struck the half hour. The 
morning school session was to begin, and Jo- 
sephine did not finish her sentence. Once in 
her seat beside the orderly little Agnes, it no 
longer seemed a simple thing to announce that 
she herself had wrecked Granny Ward’s tulip 
beds. Grandma Dobard had so taken posses- 
sion of Josephine’s heart, she could not endure 
the thought of paining her, and it would pain 
her very much to know Josephine could be 
such a vandal. ^^She’ll think I’m full of un- 
expected ugliness,” Josephine told herself. ^Tf 
Della was not in Ferndale when it happened, 
she was cleared of blame. But — ” Over and 
over Josephine came up to that “but — ” and 
did not know what to do. At the close of the 
afternoon session, she waited and walked home 
with Mrs. Thorne. She had often gone home 
with her since she had come to live in the 
Pardee house, and had slowly given over to 
her teacher the deep affection and trust she had 
bestowed upon Dr. Pardee and the Vander- 
cooks. Just now there was a special reason for 
her going. Mrs. Thorne was helping 
her make some rather difficult crocheted 
lace which was to trim a cover for 
Grandma Dobard’s dressing-table, and be 


TRUTH ABOUT THE TULIPS 199 

her birthday present. But it is impos- 
sible to count stitches when your head is buzz- 
ing with a dreadful secret. As long as no one 
spoke of it, she had not thought of it. Indeed, 
she had almost forgotten her destruction of 
Granny’s tulips. But now when someone was 
in danger of being blamed for her act, it had 
become in truth a dreadful secret. Miss Sad- 
well had once spoken of Della as “sly.” Per- 
haps she had been tempted into slyness by the 
way her world treated her. Miss Sadwell had 
always been too ready, Josephine remembered, 
to charge Della with mean motives and ac- 
tions. This was a powerful reason that she 
should not lie under the shadow of a suspicion 
that she had wrecked Granny Ward’s cherished 
tulips. Mrs. Thorne had moved about slowly, 
arranging curtains and books. At last she sat 
down just opposite Josephine, and putting her 
hands down upon her pupil’s knees, pushed her 
back and forth in the huge rocker for a mo- 
ment, before she said gently, “Well, dear, what 
is it?” 

“It’s about Granny Ward’s tulips. I did it. 
I was just boiling mad because she refused us 
one little one. I’d done no end of errands for 
her, and we’ve no tulips, and — ^well, I didn’t 
know about her mind. I skipped over when it 
was dusky, and I just snapped off the heads of 


200 JOSEPHINE 

every one I could find. I made a good job, and 
Granny was so scared she fell sick. She 
thought those broken-off tulips were a sign she 
was going to die. But you see she didn’t. 
That was when I first came. But now she is 
very sick, and she thinks Della Laprade picked 
’em, and says so, and though folks know she 
is crazy, someone will believe her. And Della is 
dead, and cannot speak for herself, and though 
her aunts say she was in Utica and can prove it 
by letters, there’ll be someone who’ll think 
there’s a kink somewhere. And then there’s 
Grandma Dobard who’ll be so ’shamed of me, 
and my onliest father who is sure to know! Oh, 
I wish I hadn’t. How I wish it! And I don’t 
know what to do.” The words fairly fell over 
each other in Josephine’s rapid speech, and at 
the last came in sobs. 

Mrs. Thorne had bent forward and had 
taken Josephine in her arms. “I’m sorry,” she 
said. “Very sorry.” 

“And the worst is, I wasn’t sorry till now,” 
said Josephine. “I don’t know why, but I 
didn’t see it then as I do now. I never once 
thought how it would hurt Grandma Dobard in 
her feelings, and the fathers. Papa Worden 
would just ’spise me,” and again she sobbed. 

“No, dear. He would dislike the action, but 
he would not despise you. He’d be sorry you 


TRUTH ABOUT THE TULIPS 201 

were such a — a young heathen.” Mrs. Thorne 
patted Josephine’s heaving shoulders. “I don’t 
think any good will be served by your pub- 
licly confessing what you did. But I can say 
publicly that the school records say Della La- 
prade was given leave of absence at that time 
to go with an aunt to Utica where she had her 
throat operated on for enlarged tonsils. I can 
say, too, that I know who the real culprit is, 
if you care to have me, though I think it 
unnecessary.” 

“You must do what you think best,” said Jo- 
sephine, after a moment’s thought. “What you 
think best, will be best.” 

“And hereafter you’ll remember that when 
you don’t do right your friends who love you 
best, suffer,” said Mrs. Thorne gravely. “You 
don’t belong all to yourself. No one does who 
has a friend who loves him.” 

The next morning after the reading of a 
Psalm and prayer, Mrs. Thorne read from 
Miss Sadwell’s day book the item that upon a 
certain May day, 1864, Della Laprade, suffer- 
ing from enlarged tonsils, was excused to go to 
Utica for their removal by Dr. Shailer. As 
she finished the reading, Jerusha Brierly raised 
her hand for permission to speak, which being 
given, she said quietly, “Granny Ward died 
last night, and at the last, being quite herself. 


202 JOSEPHINE 

mother asked her if she still thought Della 
Laprade picked her tulips, at which she said, 
‘Dear me, no. I guess somebody did to whom 
I refused them. I never did right with ’em, 
and was too much of a pig. But you see dear 
John set ’em out, and was watching to see what 
they would be when he died, and I’ve always 
watched, thinking he might be enjoying ’em 
too.’ ” 

Tears filled Josephine’s eyes, but no one no- 
ticed. There were tears in all eyes, for old 
Granny Ward’s devotion to her husband, living 
and dead, was well known. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

FERNDALE'S HERO 

would do fine in a menagerie,” 
A jibed Laura Shaw, derisively. “I 
never saw anyone so adored by animals.” 

“It’s worth while being adored,” said Maria 
Fidelia Brierly. “Fd enjoy it from a scrub 
cat.” 

“Animals usually have beautiful manners,” 
said Josephine quietly. “They usually behave 
as well as they know how, and if they seem to 
like you, you can trust it as real.” 

It was recess. The April air was chill, and 
Miss Sadwell’s yard was damp. The girls 
were taking the only exercise possible, and 
pacing in twos up and down the pavement. 

Two new members had wriggled into 
Grandma Dobard’s household. After long and 
vain watching for his friend. Dr. Pardee’s 
Nicodemus had one day run mewing loudly 
down the street to the Dobard barn. A week 
later Mrs. Thorne had moved into the Pardee 
house, but Nicodemus had by then won the 
tolerance of old Saunders by catching two mice 
and a rat, and had so won over Foxy, that that 


204 JOSEPHINE 

fastidious beast allowed him to sleep in his 
manger. Mrs. Saunders, who all her life had 
wanted a cat, and been denied one by Adam, 
courted Nicodemus with tidbits. Ann Mary, 
when told of his mouse-catching, provided a 
snug-cushioned box in the woodshed for his 
comfort, and Josephine had cuddled him in 
her arms on every possible occasion. So 
Nicodemus not only remained in his new home, 
but, giving all his cat heart to Josephine, with 
an unreason not confined to cats, followed her 
up stairs and down when permitted, and even to 
school. 

After the death of Mrs. Peck, Whig wan- 
dered about for a few weeks, growing always 
leaner and more timid, until he one day met 
Nicodemus waiting for Josephine under Miss 
Sadwell’s steps. What Nicodemus told him, 
no one knows, but Whig followed Nicodemus 
home, keeping, of course, at a discreet distance. 
Ann Mary objected to having her neat porches 
tracked. But her heart was as soft as butter, 
and Whig’s looks pleaded for him. 

“My, but it’s good luck to have a black dog 
come to you!” said Joel Ladd. “Of course 
Whig’s legs are tan, but his back’ll be black 
satin when he has good food.” 

“The hard times are no excuse for be- 
ing hard to poor, bereaved animals,” said 


FERNDALE’S HERO 205 

Grandma. So a box in the woodshed with 
straw and a warm mat were provided for the 
homeless one, and three times a day Ann Mary 
fed him. He accepted everything gratefully, 
and was obedient to the whole household, but 
like Nicodemus, he gave his heart to Joseph- 
ine, and like him, followed her to school. 
More, he would have gone with her into the 
schoolroom, had he been permitted. Some of 
the older girls had gently teased her about her 
“followers,” and Gideon, the Biles dog, had 
growled his disapproval the length of his 
fence. But no one had ever spoken disagree- 
ably before Laura Shaw’s comment. 

“Meaning, of course, that I have bad man- 
ners,” she retorted after a moment. “And that 
I’m not sincere like a good dog. Well, I 
wasn’t brought up with Indians.” 

“Dear me!” exclaimed Rusha Brierly, “I’m 
ashamed of you — ” 

Shouts echoed down the street, and almost at 
the same moment the big Methodist bell began 
to boom. Two seconds, and the Orthodox bell 
began, the Seminary, the steel bell in the fac- 
tory over the river, and then the peal in the 
spire of St. Patrick’s went cling, clang, cling 
in a hurry perhaps of fear, perhaps of glad- 
ness, and directly after the big whistle of the 
paper mill set up a great roar and kept it up. 


2o6 JOSEPHINE 

Mrs. Thorne put her pretty head out at a win- 
dow. An elderly man, making such haste as 
he could walking with two canes, was coming 
down the opposite side of the street. ‘What 
is it?” she called, regardless of dignity. “Is it 
a big fire?” 

“I ain^t heard. Where is it?” replied the 
man, a hand at his ear. 

“Why are the bells ringing?” shrilled 
Josephine. 

“Ringing!” echoed the man, taking his hand 
from his ear, and moving on, one side at a 
time. “I was told a piece back Lee’s surren- 
dered. Mebbe it’s true, though it seems too 
good to be.” 

It was Monday. All Ferndale of any conse- 
quence was washing. Long lines of white gar- 
ments fluttered in the green yards, and along 
with the scent of young grass and opening 
leaves came whiffs of hot soapsuds. But 
boilers frothed over, and fires went out. Ladies 
never before seen outside their homes save in 
careful toilets, stood at their gates in gingham 
aprons and with up-rolled sleeves. By noon 
more news came. Ferndale had a hero. The 
despatch from Washington announcing his 
death had so named him. Walter Brierly, 
made Colonel for distinguished bravery in ac- 
tion near Petersburg, Virginia, April 2d, had 


FERNDALE’S HERO 207 

been severely wounded, and had died April 
5th. Ferndale had never thought much of him. 
The older folk like Grandma Dobard had said 
he “lacked faculty.” Carefully reared, a grad- 
uate of Princeton, he had studied law, but he 
had few clients, and life had fallen so heavily 
upon his wife, who has the daughter of the sen- 
ator of the district, people had pitied her. But 
Walter Brierly had distinguished himself by 
one of the most gallant acts of the war. Fern- 
dale’s joy took on a keener edge. She would 
hold a solemn celebration that very afternoon. 
The ground was sodden from recent rain. But 
the occasion was too great for a roof. There 
must be a procession and exercises, and somehow 
it came to pass. The pupils in all the schools 
were in line from the A-B-C-D’s of Miss Dill’s 
Select School for Infants to the young ladies in 
the Seminary. Everybody marched, people 
who had never marched before and would never 
march again. Josephine, since she could not 
have a Brierly girl, walked with Agnes Benson. 
A week later she could not have told the route 
they went over. “We went ’round and ’round 
the town,” she wrote her father the next day, 
“and oh, father dearest, I’m glad as possible the 
war is fit.” 

As if the flags fluttering everywhere were 
not enough, many of the girls tied their braids 


2o8 JOSEPHINE 

with red, white and blue ribbons or pinned the 
colors upon their hats. Josephine made a tiny 
flag of old hair ribbons, and with the aid of 
Ann Mary’s potato knife, fashioned a standard 
that held the small banner pertly erect upon 
her hat. Whig and Nicodemus set out with 
her, but marching is not for cats. Whig, how- 
ever, kept at her heels the whole way, even 
when the band played. 

The service in the park began with prayer. 
No less than three ministers prayed. The 
president of the village, Zenos Peck, presided, 
and of course he made a few remarks. Then 
the ministers in turn made remarks, save Dr. 
Lawrence, the new pastor of the Orthodox 
church and Father O’Sullivan, the Catholic 
priest. Dr. Lawrence had two sons in the army 
and had fainted that morning when the news 
came, so great was his joy, and as for Father 
O’Sullivan, all he could do was to sob for the 
very same reason, for his twin brother was in the 
army, twice wounded but still ready to fight. 
And the great crowd sang. Not war songs. Not 
even “John Brown,” but hymns of sacred joy 
and thanksgiving. Even Caleb Shaw admitted 
it was a wonderful day. Bina Forrest sent a note 
to Josephine, saying she, too, was glad. “But I 
do not believe that General Robert E. Lee 
really surrendered,” she wrote in conclusion. 


FERNDALE’S HERO 209 

“He probably decided that it is not wise for 
the Southland to fight longer, which is quite 
different from giving up, and shows his great 
mind.” 

“Great fiddlestick!” exclaimed Agnes Ben- 
son, to whom Josephine read the note. “Shows 
Grant had him. But isn’t that just like ’em?” 
Agnes had a big brother in the Northern 
army. 

It was Grandma’s pleasant habit to have a 
grate fire in the sitting-room evenings until it 
was quite warm. She had also come to like to 
have Josephine prepare at least part of her 
lessons at the srhall table drawn up beside her 
own chair. This evening she was unusually 
silent while Josephine plodded through the 
Latin fable of the woman who owned a hen 
that laid daily a golden egg. At last some- 
thing in her manner fixed Josephine’s atten- 
tion, and she said with much positiveness, “You 
are thinking of something very particular. 
Grandma. I feel you.” 

“Yes, dear, I am. For one thing I’ve been 
wondering if you, fell asleep last night and left 
your lamp burning. Ann Mary says she is 
sure she filled it full in the morning, and it 
was quite empty this morning.” 

“No, I didn’t fall asleep.” 

“Then you stayed up until past midnight?” 


210 JOSEPHINE 

“I was up late, real late, I reckon.’’ 

“And what were you doing?” 

“I was fighting with knots. A new girl, 
Agnes Benson, showed me how to throw the 
thread in making tatting, but every time it 
came a knot and would not work, so I just sat 
there on the floor, and tried, and tried, and 
tried, till I did it.” 

“Good. It’s pretty work, and you can make 
yourself some handsome trimming.” 

“I don’t believe I’ll ever tat a tat. It don’t 
seem worth the fuss. But you see I couldn’t 
give in until I’d got it right. But was that 
lamp all you were thinking of?” 

“No. I’ve been wondering if Madame 
Panalle isn’t sister to McTavish. She looks 
very like him.” 

There was a long silence, during which Jo- 
sephine devoted herself to her Latin. 

At last Grandma resumed by saying, “What 
do you think?” 

“She never told me she is kin to McTavish.” 

“I didn’t ask you if you’d been told, but what 
you think,” replied Grandma with spirit. 

“I think. Grandma, that Madame believes 
she has more pupils if she is French,” said 
Josephine slowly and growing very red. “Je- 
rusha Brierly once told me Madame’s husband 
was of a very nice French family, and that 


2II 


FERNDALE’S HERO 

Madame herself has had a difficult time since 
she was left alone to get all her living.” 

“Come here to me,” commanded Grandma. 
When Josephine obeyed, Grandma clasped her 
in her arms, and kissed her on both cheeks. 
“You are quite right to keep still about what 
is not your affair. Madame is, I know, a good 
woman, and is said to be an excellent teacher. 
And the third thing on my mind is your father. 
There’s room for him right here in Ferndale. 
Now that Dr. Pardee is gone I doubt if there 
is a physician who holds his profession as his 
religion. And there isn’t one I call competent. 
I want your father to make the old name again 
stand for something in the county.” 

“God sind he may come back, and can do 
something for me sister Sarah’s Tim,” qua- 
vered Ann Mary, who had come in with a 
bucket of coals. “Pm afraid he’ll niver be th’ 
lad he was afore he was wounded. It’s a big 
price has been paid to free th’ nagurs.” 

“God must have thought them worth it,” said 
Josephine. “He must have, to have let it cost 
so many, and my papa Worden.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 

THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED 

^ ^ T T’S th’ cap I always wear to the Ladies’ 

A Aid, — ” Grandma’s face was drawn and 
pale, for she had wakened with a headache. 
“An’ it’s plenty good enough, if it has been 
washed several times. It’s good Mechlin, and 
a pretty pattern. Dear me, I thought I paid 
strict attention when I took it apart, but with 
Lee’s surrender and this headache, and all, I 
can’t remember which is top and which bottom, 
an’ I wish Martha Vredder had it, but I don’t 
feel equal to taking it to her.” 

“Let me go,” offered Josephine, and pressing 
herself affectionately against Grandma. “I 
have my music lesson by heart. Oh but it’s just 
lovely, that ‘Invitation to the Dance’!” 

“But the Professor comes at nine, and per- 
haps you’d better look your work over.” 

“I don’t need to. I can say the definitions 
of the major and minor scales backwards, for- 
wards and sideways, and what’s better I can 
play all the scales and make them.” 

“I hate to prink up in my best for the Ladies’ 
Aid,” explained Grandma. “You see, there’s a 


THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED 213 

good many comes, who can’t afford new, real 
lace.” 

“I can go as easy as falling off a log, and I’ll 
be back in no time.” 

The music lesson for that morning was 
difficult. Not only had Josephine to mem- 
orize the prelude to Weber’s “Invitation 
to the Dance” and make an exhaustive study 
of the scales in various modes and man- 
ners, but she must also have well under 
her fingers the difficult primo of the Wedding 
March in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer’s Night 
Dream, arranged for four hands. Jerusha 
Brierly was studying the secondo, and the 
duet, as well as the Weber number, was to 
be played at the public concert given by the 
Professor’s pupils in June. Aside from her nat- 
ural love for music, Josephine had several new 
reasons for exertion. Her father might arrive 
in Ferndale in time to hear her. And Mr. 
Knox, now Dr. Knox, had arrived, and with 
him was his son, quite too tall now to be called 
Johnny. They had come East by way of Pan- 
ama, because age and hardship had weakened 
the old minister, who was to have a home with 
his daughter, Mrs. Thorne, now definitely set- 
tled in the Pardee house. 

“I wish I had more own folks,” Josephine 
whispered to herself and the still convenient 


214 JOSEPHINE 

Virginia Carter. “Mrs. Thorne said her 
father’s hair was 4ike thistle-down,’ and said 
she, ‘Thistle-down easily floats away.’ Grand- 
ma’s like that, too. She grows whiter and 
whiter.” 

Intent upon her own thoughts, she failed to 
notice the signs of excitement on the street 
until the tones of one talking group made Whig 
growl. On the main thoroughfare, on which 
stood the post-office, banks, and principal shops, 
these groups were everywhere, and so im- 
pressed Whig, that he kept close to Josephine’s 
side, instead of frisking off to pass the time of 
day with other dogs abroad. Miss Vredder’s 
shop was full of women, early as it was. And it 
was plain they were not customers. All seemed 
talking at once, and Miss Vredder was frankly 
wiping her eyes, while exclaiming into space, 
for no one appeared to listen to her, “Nothing 
awfuller could have happened! No, sir! Noth- 
ing awfuller! Mark my words it’s as awful 
for the South as for the North!” 

“What is it?” asked Josephine of a short, 
stout woman near the door. 

“Sure it’s th’ President himself. Some say 
he was at the thay-ater, but I’m not belavin’ it, 
an’ it Good Friday.” Kindly Mrs. O’Dowd 
crossed herself, and muttered a prayer. Her 
husband and two brothers were with Grant, 


THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED 215 

and she bore herself with great dignity, 
though she still wore the great canvas apron 
she had put on, to go the rounds of the offices 
she daily scrubbed. 

“I don’t understand,” persisted Josephine. 

^TVe allays said th’ South’d get him,” 
shrilled a tall, sallow woman in dark violet 
calico. “I don’t know nothin’ about Good Fri- 
day or popish doings, but I’m no friend to 
play-actin’. If he’d be’n home, it’s likely he’d 
be’n here now, though there was Seward, an’ 
they got him.” 

“Don’t let’s set in judgment,” protested soft- 
voiced Mrs. Caleb Shaw. She had one front 
tooth, and a form like a feather bed. “Th’ 
President’s been a dreadfully burdened man, 
an’ as for Good Friday, likely’s not, he didn’t 
know more about it ’n I did, till I had ’flamatory 
rheumtiz, an’ had one o’ th’ Bogue girls in to 
help. She explained how her church keeps th’ 
day on account o’ th’ crucifyin’ o’ th’ Lord. It’s 
th’ livin’ truth, I was sixty-one afore I knew 
Good Friday from any other Friday.” 

“I wasn’t brought up to keep Good Friday 
either,” interposed Miss Vredder. “My 
folks were all Presbyterians. As for plays, 
th’ last time I was in New York after 
goods, who did I run into but th’ Utica 
Chapins; you know, the relations of Mrs. Pol- 


2i6 JOSEPHINE 

luck Jones. Nothing would do but I must go 
to hear ‘The American Cousin’ with them. 
Their only son and their son-in-law was 
with Sherman, and they were worried 
to pieces. But Elmer says to me, ‘We 
have to go on livin’, Martha.’ He’s my 
second cousin on mother’s side. ‘An’ what’s 
more, if we can be made to forget our- 
selves for a few minutes, we’ll be better able 
to bear what may be cornin’.’ An’ I mus’ say 
the play did us all good. It’s likely th’ Presi- 
dent felt he needed rest for th’ jobs ahead. An’ 
what’s more, he had to think of Mrs. Lincoln.” 

“I’m afraid Mr. Johnson will have more 
than his hands full,” said a very dignified old 
lady who had just come in with Jerusha 
Brierly, and was no less a person than 
Grandaunt Fidelia. Her “difficulty” was ap- 
parent. She walked with a cane, a gold-topped 
one, but still a cane, a support no woman had 
ever used in Ferndale, no matter how lame 
she might be. “To bring order and prosperity 
back to this country calls for a large-minded, 
wise man and though well meaning, Mr. John- 
son has never struck me as either large-minded 
or wise.” 

All faces were turned toward the speaker, 
who was the widow of the Hon. Philander 
Scrann, long an ambassador to some country in 


THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED 217 

Europe, from which region she had brought 
back a bright black wig, her cane, many rings, 
and the rheumatism. 

“I’m Afraid you’re right,” assented Mrs. 
Shaw. “An’ I’m ’fraid, too, this awful thing 
ain’t goin’ to make th’ North feel any too pleas- 
ant toward th’ South. The new President ’ll 
need grace, an’ he’ll need to steer a careful 
course. I do p’sume a good many’ll feel like 
stompin^ pretty hard on what’s left o’ what they 
called their Confederacy.” 

“If th’ South didn’t hire Booth, they pintedly 
sicked him on,” cried the sallow woman in 
violet calico, her voice quavering discordantly. 
“Nobody can soft-soap th’ South to me. 
They’re capable o’ anything down there, I be- 
lieve.” The poor creature broke into loud weep- 
ing and was gathered into the strong arms of 
Mrs. O’Dowd. Everyone pitied Mrs. Fowler, 
whose husband had died in Andersonville. 

“There, there! Nobody soft-soaps nothin’,” 
comforted Mrs. O’Dowd, regardless of gram- 
mar, and patting the shaking, bony shoulders. 
“Be sure whativer part th’ South’s had in this 
divilmint, she’ll pay for dear. God’s above 
yit. You’ll see.” 

“I guess I never realized what Lincoln 
was.” Miss Vredder spoke as one mak- 
ing a public confession of wrong-doing. “My 


2i8 JOSEPHINE 

nephew Tom Von Zant says th’ South ’ll miss 
his great heart even mor’n th’ North ’ll miss 
his calm judgment.” 

The clock in the great church spire struck 
the half hour. Louisa Cliff, just home from 
Albany, and expensively dressed, had come in 
and stood close by Josephine. The temptation 
was too great. “I’m glad old Abe Lincoln’s 
shot,” she hissed into Josephine’s delicate ear. 
“An’ I’m glad he’s dead. My father don’t think 
any more of him now’n he did of him alive. 
Hurrah for Wilkes Booth!” 

Forgetful of Grandma’s cherished lace, for- 
getful that she might be giving plain proof 
of being brought up with “wild Indians,” Jo- 
sephine whirled and brought her right hand 
with its package down with a sounding slap 
upon Louisa’s cheek. In a flash Louisa had 
caught Josephine’s arms at the elbow in a vice- 
like grip, and being both taller and stronger, 
she shook Josephine so fiercely her hat fell to 
the floor, along with the package of lace. 
Neither made any sound, but their eyes shot 
fire. As near as two pretty young misses can 
look like young demons, they did. Just what 
might have happened, had not the scandalized 
women separated them and Whig set sharp 
teeth in Louisa’s right foot, cannot be imagined. 

“Who began it?” demanded Grandma, who 


THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED 219 

had heard the story much embellished by Ann 
Mary. “Begin at the beginning.” 

“Fd been trying to make out what had hap- 
pened when Louisa spoke right in my ear. She 
said she was glad th’ President’s been killed.” 

“Dear me!” exclaimed Grandma, rocking 
jerkily. “And what next?” 

“I struck her. I couldn’t help it. An’ she 
grabbed me, and they made her go home.” 

“Your arms prove she grabbed you, but 
you’re getting to be a big girl.” There was 
a long silence, then Grandma continued, 
“When I was your age, I thought myself a 
young lady. Do you? Are you going to strike 
people who vex you all your life?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“You don’t? Well, well!” 

Again there was silence, broken only by the 
ticking of the clock, and the whining of Whig, 
just outside in the dining-room. He had taken 
to sitting with Grandma, and wheedled her into 
letting him join her, by whining in a certain 
coaxing way. 

“I s’pose you are sorry?” There was a sharp 
line of inquiry between Grandma’s handsome 
brows. 

“No. Not a bit.” 

“But you are sorry you made a spectacle of 
yourself.” 


220 JOSEPHINE 

^‘There’s not a bit of sorry in me. Honest 
there isn’t.” Josephine’s tone carried convic- 
tion. “I’d make more of a show of myself 
to give her a whack that would hurt.” 

Again there was silence, which Whig so im- 
proved that Grandma rose and admitted him. 
He came in mincing, head and tail lowered, 
but once on the cushion Grandma had 
provided for his use, he took on his usual 
pridefulness. Grandma ran a knitting-needle 
under her “hypocrite” and scratched her head 
vigorously, a sure sign she was puzzled into 
forgetting herself. 

“People will say you have a horrid temper. 
They’ll say, too, that you’ve had no bringing 
up.” Grandma spoke gravely and quietly. 
“Your people will be blamed for not teaching 
you self-control.” 

“I’ve had th’ best of bringing up!” cried 
Josephine explosively. 

“They’ll say I haven’t done my duty by you.” 
A quiver ran over Grandma’s delicate old face. 
“You see to strike Louisa Cliff is different from 
striking one of your own mates.” 

“None of my mates would have done what 
she did.” 

“Exactly.” 

“Aaah! I see.” Josephine clasped Grandma 
about the neck, regardless of her new muslin 


THE PRESIDENT IS KILLED 221 


collar, and kissed her first on one cheek, then 
upon the other, then added, “I’ll do anything 
you say, short of telling Lousia I’m sorry.” 

“With the President shot in cold blood, I 
don’t think you are called upon to go that 
length,” decided Grandma. “But we may lose 
Whig. They say he bit Louisa. A man was 
here asking Ann Mary for him this afternoon.” 

“And what will they do to him?” 

“Shoot him.” 

“Oh, Grandma! I wish I were a man!” 

“Men can’t always strike those who richly 
deserve it. We have to learn to keep still. As 
for Whig,” Grandma looked down at the dog 
with the cunning of a mother fox, “we’ll see. 
But the next time remember unwise actions may 
have as many disagreeable consequences as bad 


ones. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

AT THE CONCERT 

WISH with all my heart I hadn’t!’’ 

A “Hadn’t what?” Grandma looked up 
over her glasses at Josephine with wistful 
tenderness. 

“Hadn’t struck Louisa Cliff — ” 

‘‘They’ll never get Whig. Joel an’ Ann 
Mary’ll outwit ’em,” interrupted Grandma. 

“I’m not fretting about Whig, though he 
certainly is a traveled dog. Louisa has scarlet 
fever, and Rusha Brierly says, the doctor they 
had up from Utica to see her, didn’t give them 
much hope.” 

“Your striking her didn’t give her the fever, 
and it’s plain nature to be hateful to those who 
are hateful to us, though of course it is not 
well-bred.” Grandma smiled sadly, then added, 
“Louisa’s had little or no training. Her mother’s 
not qualified to give it. 

“Well, I’ve been brunged up enough,” began 
Josephine. 

“You mean brought up,” corrected Grand- 
ma. “A child’s not to blame that she has not 
been taught.” 


AT THE CONCERT 223 

“Well, there’s things you don’t need to be 
told,” argued Josephine, “like being kind. 
Louisa’s hateful because she enjoys it.” 

“No doubt. But had her mother been a lady, 
she would have learned by now, how ugly 
hatefulness is. A little girl is taught the beauty 
of kindness and good behaviour by living with 
a lady. That is why I blame myself, when I 
see a fault in you.” 

“You shall not blame yourself. There’s my 
feelings — and school — and I’ve not been with 
you always. And I often feel like two people. 
One wants to be good as — as — the saints, and the 
other wants to scratch and bite and kick.” 

“Well, try and keep that scratching, biting, 
kicking self under control. But where, pray tell 
me, was the Cliff girl exposed? She’s just 
back from Albany and the cases on the Flats 
are all over with.” 

“She was at Miss Vredder’s, and Bina’s been 
down in the salesroom every day since she’s 
been up and around. Dr. Kendrick says when 
one is peeling is just the time to give the fever.” 

“Well, Kendrick seems to have a good many 
new ideas if he does tell about people’s being 
^amaciated’ and hgorant,’ ” said Grandma. 

“Sure ma’am, don’t ye think a body’s liable 
to talk th’ way he heard whin he was little,” 
said Ann Mary, who had just come in with a 


224 JOSEPHINE 

hod of coal. five an’ twinty year I’ve 

lived wid yoursilf, an’ a body’d think I’d ’ave 
lost whativer brogue I had whin I come, but 
whiles I know I spake a bit loike th’ auld sod. 
An’ savin’ your prisence I stipped in to tell 
ye, Whig’s home again an’ his chain hangin’ to 
’im, an’ he’s that thin th’ craytur he’d not cast 
a shadder, bad cess to thim as let him starve!” 

^^Joel’s people would never let Whig starve,” 
interposed Josephine. “It’s likely he starved 
himself, and they loosed his chain to bring 
him home, and he got away.” 

“Well, now’t he’s here again, whativer shall 
I do wid him, ma’am?” demanded Ann Mary 
of Grandma. 

“Put him in the back kitchen. An’ give him 
warm milk at first. A dog that’s run eleven 
miles twice to get back to his home and 
friends is worth taking care of. An’ if anyone 
comes asking about him, you call me.” 

No one came asking for Whig. The Cliff 
family were all too busy trying to keep life in 
Louisa, who after the fever had spent itself 
had other troubles brought on by it. Even the 
noted specialist her father called at great ex- 
pense from New York could give them no hope 
that she would ever hear. 

As a reward for her diligence, though she 
did not know it. Prof. Schimilfinig at the last 


AT THE CONCERT 


225 

moment put Josephine down for a third appear- 
ance upon his concert program. It was no less 
than the difficult second primo of a trio from 
one of Mendelssohn’s symphonies. Agnes Ben- 
son had the easy secondo, Jerusha Brierly the 
easy first primo. Josephine’s part bristled in 
some places with accidentals and cadenzas and 
in others had groups of five notes to be played 
in the time of two. Jerusha was always a trifle 
fast and was prone to rubatos when no such 
liberty was indicated in the text. Agnes was 
short-sighted and a slow reader. It was diffi- 
cult to sit between the two and keep time. 
Every day the little professor came to hear them 
practise, now at the Dobard home, now at the 
Brierlys’, for, since Grandaunt Fidelia had 
decided to make their home hers, they had 
the use of her huge square piano, a yellow- 
keyed affair, which she called “an instrument” 
and whose carved legs she kept shrouded in 
cambric bags. Sometimes the professor was 
patient and hopeful. Oftener he snorted and 
fumed, and if at the Brierlys’ kicked into the 
cambric bags muttering to himself in German, 
“My God in heaven, what have I done to be so 
tormented !” 

All days come at last. Jones Hall was trimmed 
with garlands of cedar and oak leaves. Two 
grand pianos, their covers uplifted in a com- 


226 JOSEPHINE 

manding manner, stood upon the stage. The 
little professor, in evening clothes that seemed 
a size too large for him, a white vest, and white 
gloves long in the fingers, tried to be every- 
where at once. Some of his pupils, excited by 
the crowd and the occasion, did better than 
their previous best. Of this number was 
Josephine. Other pupils were unnerved, and 
did worse than ever before, of these were 
Agnes Benson and Jerusha Brierly. 

“How did you manage to keep so cool? Oh, 
you did beautiful!” exclaimed Agnes, hiding a 
tear-wet face upon Josephine’s pink barage 
shoulder. 

“The professor said I’ve no more music in 
me than a cow,” wailed Jerusha upon the other 
shoulder. “He said I am a three-story fool 
in the trio.” 

“He put me out with his snorting,” said 
Agnes. 

“And Aunt Fidelia looked awful!” sighed 
Jerusha. “She kind o’ glared every time I 
looked up. And I had to see her. She was 
right before me. She thinks I look like her, 
and therefore I ought to be musical. As if 
you could be musical by wanting to be! If you 
aren’t, you aren’t. So!” 

“That’s what I say,” chimed in Agnes. “Poor 
papa and mama want me able to play the 


AT THE CONCERT 227 

organ. Organists are expensive, and church 
folks like to get a minister whose family can 
do everything. And they want me able to 
teach. Oh, the poor dears! Fancy me teach- 
ing music! IVe got to earn my living as soon 
as possible! Oh, dear!’’ 

“Aunt Fidelia wants me to teach music.” 
Jerusha shuddered. “She says it’s genteel. I’d 
rather scrub floors.” 

“Don’t mind so,” comforted Josephine. “I 
don’t believe people noticed as you think. 
They are not used to trios. And it wasn’t so 
bad.” 

“Wasn’t it! And don’t tell me folks didn’t 
notice!” Jerusha’s face became grim. “Aunt 
Fidelia noticed. She used to play beautifully 
before she had rheumatism in her fingers. She’s 
a sharp one. She bounces at you with awful 
questions, as to the essential difference of 
quality between the music of Beethoven and 
that of Mozart, or Wagner, and how to modu- 
late from one key to another.” The possibilities 
ahead were so unpleasant, Jerusha again sought 
comfort on Josephine’s shoulder. 

“And mother never missed one of my 
breaks,” sobbed Agnes. “I wouldn’t feel so aw- 
ful if I didn’t so want to please her and father.” 

“You’ll never do anything if you sit down 
and cry afore things, and say you can’t,” said 


228 JOSEPHINE 

Josephine with sudden impatience. ^‘What’s 
th’ use of giving up, when you’ve just begun?” 

“I guess I’m chicken-livered,” said Jerusha 
with a clearing-up sniff. “But you see anything 
that don’t please Aunt Fidelia is like the 
Townes. Mother was a Towne.” 

“A singular place for spots,” observed 
Grandma, laying a hand first upon one shoulder 
then upon the other. “What did you get into 
the evening of the concert?” 

It was Sunday morning, and the second time 
Josephine had worn the pink barage. 

“I reckon that’s where the girls cried on 
me at the concert,” admitted Josephine after 
examining herself in the long mirror. 

“Cried on you!” echoed Grandma. 

“Agnes Benson and Jerusha Brierly felt 
crushed. They did stumble pretty bad.” 

“No reason why they should spot up your 
pretty new dress.” Grandma turned Josephine 
about, that she might see the full extent of the 
damage. “With prices where they are, folks 
should use some judgment as to what they cry 
on.” 

“I liked it.” Josephine, turning very red, 
leaned close against the old lady. “Not having 
any sisters or cousins, why — I liked it, that they 
cared enough for me to cry on me.” 

Grandma made no reply but put her arms 


AT THE CONCERT 


229 

about Josephine for a moment and held her 
close. “Manda Pratt made some knots of pink 
satin ribbon for the shoulders of this dress and 
we thought it looked quite well enough with- 
out them,” she said, after a little. ^T’ll pin them 
on today and tomorrow I’ll sew them on. 
Friends are a long way ahead of frocks.” 


CHAPTER XXIX 

GRADUATION EXERCISES 

T he dosing exerdses of Miss Sadwell’s 
school were always held in the big Ortho- 
dox church. For the occasion a platform was 
built out over the altar rail and the four front 
pews. This was covered with carpet. Along 
the old-fashioned gallery were hung garlands 
of fragrant cedar. Blixly’s orchestra came all 
the way from Syracuse with violins, flutes, 
oboes and a cornet, to furnish the music, and 
sat in the choir seats by the great organ. The 
hair-cloth sofa, that ordinarily stood against the 
wall behind the preacher’s desk, was wheeled 
out and became the seat of state for the essay 
readers, who went up in twos “just as the animals 
entered the ark,” Agnes Benson told Josephine. 
After four essays had been read the audience 
were refreshed by music, and rose and turned 
about to look at the musicians, who were well 
worth gazing at, especially old Blixly, who 
weighed nearly three hundred pounds. Miss 
Sadwell, stately in black satin, Mrs. Thorne, 
beautiful in lilac crape, and Madame Panalle, 
brilliant in green taffeta, sat upon the left. 


GRADUATION EXERCISES 231 

Madame also wore a head-dress of ribbon and 
artificial lilacs, that Miss Vredder said was 
“perfectly French.’’ It certainly made her un- 
usual, and anew impressed the plain folk of 
Ferndale with her foreign extraction. Even 
more than Miss Sadwell, Madame, in their 
eyes, stood for what they craved for their girls, 
and vaguely named “advantages.” On the 
right of the sofa sat Dr. Lawrence, the pastor 
of the Orthodox church; Mr. Cobb, the new 
rector at St. John’s; Mr. Benson, father of 
Agnes and Matilda; Judge Polluck Jones, and 
just behind them and beside a huge flowering 
oleander in a tub, little Dr. Flandreau of Pom- 
pey Hill. These gentlemen had been invited 
by Miss Sadwell to act as judges in the prize 
contests in arithmetic and composition. Mr. 
Littlejohn had intended being present himself 
but as he was detained at home, he had written 
out his wishes to guide the committee. The 
mathematical problems presented to the pupils 
during the examination were to be drawn from 
sources unknown to them. The essays read at 
the exercises called “The Exhibition,” must 
not go through the hands of a teacher, but be 
handed to the committee with all their faults, 
if such they had. Grace and charm of ex- 
pression and originality of thought must be con- 
sidered even more than mere correctness of 


232 JOSEPHINE 

form. Josephine and Bina went first of the 
younger set. Josephine, as usual when deeply 
moved, was quite white even to the lips when 
she took her seat. Bina, very composed, spread 
out her skirts with perfect self-possession. 
Miss Sadwell not only smiled at Josephine, 
who was to read first, but there came into 
her waxen cheeks the delicate flush of color 
that meant her heart was warm with emotion, 
and somehow Josephine knew it meant love 
for her. Madame Panalle paused in the act 
of fishing out a cardamon seed from her bead 
bag and gave her a quick nod that meant 
“Courage,” and Mrs. Thorne’s large dark eyes 
shone with the same wish, as Judge Polluck 
Jones in a booming voice announced that “Miss 
Josephine Dobard will read an essay upon 
Home.” 

“I’ve been told I have chosen a subject upon 
which nothing new can be said.” Her hands 
trembled a little, but Josephine’s voice rang clear 
and musical. “Perhaps this is true. But it should 
be remembered that I have not lived long 
enough to make my thoughts very valuable 
upon any subject. On the other hand, the 
world and everything in it is quite as new 
to me as it was to Adam. If the world were 
just made, and I the first girl in it, all could 
not be newer. 


GRADUATION EXERCISES 233 

“Webster’s dictionary says, ^one’s home is his 
dwelling, his house, or residence.’ That sounds 
as if the principal part of the home were the 
roof and walls of stone, brick, or wood. I like 
better the form the French folk use for home. 
They say, ‘Chez nous’ with us, or ‘Chez moi’ 
with me, or ‘Chez vous’ with you, meaning our 
home, my home, your home. They feel that 
people make the home. It seems to me without 
people that love you, a house is not a home at 
all, but just — a house. 

“The first home I remember was built of logs, 
and looked out on a great expanse called ‘The 
Parade,’ because the soldiers went through 
their drills there. Beyond that was a stockade, 
also of logs, and then there were roses, and 
roses, and roses, and the Columbia river, many 
times as wide as Fern river, the cause of so 
many squabbles here in Ferndale. Miles be- 
yond the river were mountains. Some always 
glimmered with snow. Others became quivery 
blue in summer. Others lower and nearer 
were green. I cannot tell you how beautiful 
all were. One has to see some things to know 
what they are really like. Words cannot de- 
scribe, and pictures do not show all, or even 
part of, what your eyes can see. Post Klamas 
held a good many soldiers, for the country was 
full of Indians, and is yet, I dare say. Some 


234 JOSEPHINE 

were good friends, but usually you could not 
trust them. If you stopped being careful or 
wandered about outside the stockade you ran 
the risk of losing your scalp and your life. 
Everybody had to know how to ride a 
horse and how to shoot off guns, even the 
ladies. 

“My father Doctor tried to keep everybody 
well. My father. Captain Worden, commanded 
a troop of cavalry. When I think of my way-off 
home, my thoughts center upon my mamma 
Worden and my fathers and the kind Sergeant 
he was then, but he is now Captain McTavish, 
whom most of you have seen.” Something 
seemed to close Josephine’s throat for a moment 
as her thoughts dwelt upon the past, forever 
vanished. The great audience was so still the 
buzzing of a bumblebee on one side of the long 
windows, beyond which hung a honey locust 
in bloom, could be plainly heard. When at 
last Josephine could control her throat and 
began reading more than one pair of eyes were 
full of tears. “When we came East we were 
a long time upon the ship, and that too, be- 
gan to be a home. I was not sick a moment 
and Captain Barnes and his wife were very good 
to me. But I would not care to have my on- 
liest home, a ship upon the sea. Captain Barnes 
said, ^The land is so dusty I have a sore throat 


GRADUATION EXERCISES 235 

when I’m ashore, and often trouble with my 
nose. Give me a good steady boat!’ We had 
a very high sea when he said this, and going 
up and down stairs was an adventure, and all 
the dishes on the tables were set in racks to 
keep them from falling on the floor. So you 
see sailors love their wandering homes. I am 
very happy in my Ferndale home, and have 
grown more and more happy since Grandma 
thinks I know enough to do a few things to 
help, as dusting, feeding Whig and Nicode- 
mus, our dog and cat, and filling vases with 
flowers. I am very sorry for people who must 
always live in other people’s houses, or who 
must have everything done for them. It is 
pleasantest to live in your own house and do 
things for people. I am still more sorry for 
people who spoil their homes by being cross 
and unkind. One cannot be happy in a grand 
castle if scolded and snapped at, or if the castle 
be untidy and dirty. A good home means con- 
stant work and care by somebody. 

“I hope when I grow up I shall be able to 
travel about and see a good deal of what Virgil 
calls ^the orb of the earth.’ But I want a home 
of my very own to come back to. I hope I shall 
have my own people to love, for as I have said 
before, without people you love you cannot 
have a home, only a house.” 


236 JOSEPHINE 

Bina’s new muslin had been made a trifle 
longer than her other frocks and she had a 
new salmon-colored sash and hair ribbons. She 
tucked her lace-trimmed handkerchief into her 
belt as she rose, and looked about with great 
deliberation. Secretly frightened, she did not 
show it by a tremor. The fever had taken her 
pretty long hair, but the new crop had come 
in thick and curling, and she made an engag- 
ing picture, and — knew it. Her subject was 
“Flowers,’’ and she had not read many 
sentences before it was painfully apparent Mrs. 
Thorne’s blue pencil had not weeded any 
adjectives from her essay. 

“What is more entrancing than a flower?” 
she began. “And in what marvelous variety have 
these exquisite and wonderful creations been 
lavished upon the earth! Somewhere I have 
read this, ‘Flowers are ever mute preachers 
of the divine, and incentives to the pure and 
noble.’ Possibly the splendid wealth of bloom 
in my beloved and now desecrated Southland 
may have an intimate connection with its lofty 
and spotless standards of honor, its always per- 
fect chivalry of action.” 

The Rev. Mr. Benson cleared his throat nois- 
ily at this point and clasped his hands first about 
his very round stomach, then about his right 
knee, while Dr. Lawrence, who was tall and 


GRADUATION EXERCISES 237 

lean, nervously crossed his right leg over the left, 
then reversed the process, while scowling 
severely at Madame Panalle just opposite. 
“Never shall I forget my last view of the noble 
magnolias standing before my beloved South- 
land ancestral home. The splendid trees were 
set round and round with milk-white cups, 
whose delicious perfume filled the balmy air. 
In a few days, expanding into royal blossoms, 
the heavy petals would fall open, revealing the 
clustering stamens, pink-tipped, like some kinds 
of matches. Beyond the circling row of great 
magnolias opened the stately avenue leading 
to the big road, and this was lined with Pride 
of India trees, and when I last passed down 
that beautiful drive, the India trees hung 
full of lilac flowers, also giving out perfume 
delightful, unforgetable. In the opens the 
azaleas were still pink as dawn, and further in 
the thickets were Judas trees like pink-purple 
clouds, and dogwoods white as milk, while 
the exquisite sweet bay tree filled the air with 
its delicious incense. Further on we passed 
through pine woods where Atamasco lilies 
swayed their shining white cups, beautiful 
enough to serve as chalices upon the altar of the 
Lord. Along the roadside the marvelous pas- 
sion vine, whose green and violet blossoms 
bear the emblems of the suffering of the world’s 


238 JOSEPHINE 

Saviour, lavished its beauty along with the 
yellow jasmine, and the sensative brier, whose 
leaves and rose-pink balls of bloom are 
wilted by a touch. Inside the tall snake fence 
were golden cacti and great bunches of oxalis, 
of the sort ladies cherish in baskets during the 
winter months here in Ferndale. Invading 
hirelings may burn the Southland’s stately and 
beautiful homes, slay her knightly sons, and 
break the hearts of her beautiful and accom- 
plished daughters, while mothers pine away 
from hopeless grief into the dark and lonely 
grave, but the ruthless invader, if he destroy 
all else, cannot totally ravage from her lofty 
and aristocratic brow, her glorious crown of 
beautiful flowers.” 

There was more in the same strain. Dr. 
Flandreau, winking very hard as he did when 
puzzled by a very sick patient, drew his chair 
forward regardless of a wrinkle in the carpet. 
Dr. Lawrence crossed and uncrossed his legs 
many times. Judge Polluck Jones chewed nerv- 
ously at a bit of licorice, and the Rev. Mr. 
Benson almost wriggled his chair off the plat- 
form. As Bina sat down a strange sigh passed 
over the audience, repressed, but still audible. 
The North wanted to be fair-minded, even 
magnanimous. But President Lincoln had been 
dead less than two months. People were not 


GRADUATION EXERCISES 239 

quite ready to hear about the nobility of soul 
of the Southern people, nor even to do justice 
to the beauty of her flowers. 

The orchestra played Schumann’s “Dreams.” 
Other pupils came up and read. The minutes 
ran into hours. At last the exercises were over 
and it was time for the committee’s report. 
Judge Jones had been made chairman, and as 
he read his voice again boomed quite as it did 
when he was upon the bench and passing 
sentence, or giving a verdict. After saying a 
word of commendation for every essay, he con- 
tinued, “We at first felt it unwise to give two 
prizes to one person. But second thought told 
us a prize won is won, and there our respon- 
sibility ends. Though the youngest of her class. 
Miss Jerusha Brierly has won the senior prize in 
mathematics. The junior prize is awarded to 
Miss Josephine Dobard. The senior prize in 
composition is awarded Miss Matilda Ben- 
son. The junior is unanimously given Miss 
Josephine Dobard. Will these young ladies 
please step forward.” 

“It feels like a dream,” said Josephine, when 
later she stood by the church door with her 
father, who had arrived just in time to hear her 
essay. “I also feel greedy to have both junior 
prizes, in spite of what the Judge said, that ^a 
prize won is won.’ ” She glanced at her father’s 


240 JOSEPHINE 

arm on which were piled Irving’s ‘^Life of 
Washington” in four volumes, and “Tennyson’s 
Poems,” in two. 

“You needn’t feel anything of the sort,” said 
Fidelia Maria Brierly, who had worked hard 
for the prizes. “Our family’s satisfied,” and 
she glanced admiringly at her sister Jerusha, a 
few steps away, holding a fine edition of Cham- 
ber’s “English Literature.” 

“And the Bensons are entirely satisfied,” put. 
in Agnes Benson, pointing at her older sister, 
who was displaying Mrs. Browning’s poems in 
blue and gold. 

“Of course a Southern girl would stand no 
chance with a Northern committee,” Bina For- 
rest murmured bitterly to Miss Vredder who’ 
had come to join her. 

“Fiddlestick!” Miss Vredder’s opinions were 
always close to the tip of her tongue. “I wish 
to mercy you’d ’a’ let me see your piece afore 
you read it! I knew your cake was dough the 
minute I heard that about finvading hirelings.’ 
Mercy to me! I’ve always sympathized with 
the South, but I never was such a ninny as to 
think the government hadn’t the right to make 
them secedin’ states keep in th’ Union. If you’d 
stuck to your text you’d ’a’ won. Mr. Cobb 
praised your knowledge of the flowers of the 
South to me, an’ said he wished he knew as 


GRADUATION EXERCISES 241 

much of the trees and flowers right about here.” 

“Fd like to give Bina Forrest my Tennyson 
books,” said Josephine to her father as they 
walked slowly homeward. She had seen Bina’s 
face and guessed her bitter feelings. “I think 
she used beautiful words in her essay.” 

“You may give her some books just like these 
if you wish, but not these.” The Doctor touched 
the books upon his arm. “You fairly earned 
these. More, they tell me, my little girl has 
studied and thought.” 


CHAPTER XXX 

A NEW MOTHER 

THINK you should know something you 

A don’t or at least don’t appear to,” said 
Fidelia Brierly, drawing her pretty brows to- 
gether in an anxious pucker. 

“Since Aunt Fidelia came the goings on of 
‘The First’ are known right away at our 
house.” 

“I wish I knew exactly what people mean 
by ‘The First,’ ” exclaimed Josephine, unmind- 
ful of the “something she should know.” 
“Grandma talks about ‘The First’ and as they 
are always old families, I suppose their grand- 
parents were the first folks to come to Fern- 
dale.” 

“When Aunt Fidelia talks about ‘The First’ 
she means people of the most consequence, like 
your grandmother, and us, and the Bileses.” 

“Oh!” assented Josephine absently. She had 
been dancing along the box-bordered way lead- 
ing to the broad flight of steps, by which one 
ascended to the chapel floor of Ferndale Semi- 
nary, in which she had become a pupil. 

Unable because of ill health to open her 


A NEW MOTHER 


243 

school as usual in September, Miss Sadwell 
had decided to rest for a year. Changes in 
the Seminary faculty opened a place for 
Madame Panalle, and Mrs. Thorne was to act 
as preceptress until the return of Miss Bram- 
hall from Europe, which might be in early 
November. It was a golden October morn- 
ing. Beyond the box border verbenas, protected 
at night from the frost, still showed scarlet, 
white and purple stars. The park before the 
Seminary seemed hung about with Spanish 
flags. The tall white oak, before the entrance 
gate, sent down a shower of sweet acorns at 
every gust of wind. 

“What is it I should know?” demanded Jo- 
sephine after a moment’s waiting. 

“Has no one hinted anything to you?” 

“No, Sissy. When people hint I make ’em 
tell me what’s on their minds,” replied Joseph- 
ine carelessly. Then she began dancing and 
singing the old rhyme, “I’ll take nimble steps 
like David. Oh, I’ll take nimble steps like 
David. Oh, I’ll take lively steps like David, and 
show the Christian folk how he behaved!” 
“Well, let’s have it,” she continued. “One min- 
ute, two minutes, and I’m not told yet.” 

It was Saturday. The two had been at the 
Seminary practising a duet that demanded 
two pianos. Just then Prof. Schimilfinig came 


244 JOSEPHINE 

in at the gate, and Josephine, remember- 
ing that Fidelia Maria was prone to make very 
small matters into something large, turned 
and skipped homeward. The French win- 
dows in the Dobard long parlor stood wide 
open and showed it quite empty save for a tall 
young man in white duck clothes and a paper 
cap, who was briskly whistling a jerky tune, 
known as^^Captain Jinks,” as he rapidly and dex- 
trously spread paste upon wall-paper carefully 
arranged upon a long table contrived of two 
planks and two wooden horses. He had been 
at work a fortnight, and with his short, red- 
faced assistant, had already wrought wonders 
up stairs and in Grandma’s room. In fact he 
began in Grandma’s room,^ that she might have, 
as she said, “a place where she could hear her- 
self think.” 

The heavy plaster ornamentations about all 
the chandeliers had been removed, and in her 
room the dark paper had been soaked off, to 
give place to a paper all white and blue and 
silver. There were lace curtains and silk hang- 
ings and a new carpet all to match. Grandma 
told Ann Mary, if the whole house was going 
to become as pretty as her own room, it would 
be quite good enough for the President, or a 
queen. She was very happy that her step-son 
had decided to remain in Ferndale and to 


A NEW MOTHER 


245 

occupy Dr. Pardee’s office until such time as 
Pardde Thorne could occupy it with him. Jo- 
sephine’s little triumph had also made her 
happy, and the flutter and effort of making the 
house fresh with paint, paper and some new 
furnishings was a dear delight. But she was 
often strangely tired, and she even admitted to • 
Ann Mary, that once at least, she had had 
“queer feelings.” Often she would fall asleep 
in her chair and would snore loudly, when Ann 
Mary would slip in quietly and watch that she 
did not fall. And she grew more and more 
forgetful. H 

For reasons he did not reveal Whig gave up 
following Josephine to school after she became 
a pupil at the Seminary, and attached himself 
more and more to Grandma, who took secret 
comfort in his company, and often spoke of him 
as a truly wonderful animal. 

When Josephine came in he sat before 
Grandma’s door, his nose pressed close against 
the line it made with the casing, and every now 
and then he whined sorrowfully and as if to 
himself. No answer coming to her gentle tap, 
Josephine carefully turned the knob. Grandma 
sat in her accustomed place before the fire- 
place, in which coal was burning. The white 
marble mantle had been replaced by a mantle 
of carved mahogany. Grandma’s easy chair 


246 JOSEPHINE 

had been newly covered with a blue, white and 
silver silk that made a beautiful background 
for her head. Her knitting lay in her lap. She 
made no sound when Whig pressed against 
her knees and cried, nor yet when Josephine 
laid her hand upon her wide white brow. She 
did not breathe. 

Two weeks later Josephine went to the rail- 
way station with Bina Forrest, who after al- 
most three years’ absence, was to return to her 
Southern home. 

“Of course I don’t know what’s before 
me,” said Bina at parting. “I’m afraid 
there’s nothing very pleasant. But relations-in- 
law are often lovely. Uncle Polluck Jones, for 
all he is so stern to look at, has been mighty 
kind. I only hope the aunt-in-law, I’m to live 
with for a time, will be as nice. She’s a widow. 
Most nice ladies are in the Southland. And 
I hope things will turn out happy for you. 
Write after a bit and tell me how everything 
is going.” 

“I will,” promised Josephine, feeling vaguely 
that Bina seemed to speak out of a knowledge 
of her affairs she herself did not possess. 

On her return home she sought her father, 
determined to ask him if he knew what these 
obscure hints meant. He was not to be found. 
All old Saunders could tell her was that some- 


A NEW MOTHER 


247 

one from Pompey Hill had come to carry the 
Doctor off to a consultation, and that he had 
said as they rolled out of the yard, that he 
might not return until mid-afternoon. Not 
knowing what else to do she looked about for 
Ann Mary and found her in the frost-bitten 
garden pulling some turnips for a soup she 
was compounding. 

“Folks have talked to me lately as if some- 
thing was going to happen to me,” Josephine 
began. “Do you know what they mean?” 

“Things is alius happenin’,” parried Ann 
Mary, as she rose heavily, brandishing her po- 
tato knife. “From th’ time we’s born till we 
die, we’re liable to have somethin’ happen us.” 

“But this is something special. Fidelia Maria 
Brierly was going to tell me what it was and 
she didn’t. It was the day I found dear Grand- 
ma. She said I ought to know. Now if there’s 
something I ought to know, I want to know it.” 

“How should I know what Fidely Brierly 
was goin’ to tell ye?” 

“She acted sorry for me, — and come to think 
of it so did Bina today, and I believe you look 
sorry too.” 

“Sorry? — Me? Well now, me dear, I’ve just 
wan advice to give ye. Niver hunt trouble. Let 
it hunt you.” Ann Mary gathered up her tur- 
nips and started for the house. 


248 JOSEPHINE 

“See here.” Josephine laid a detaining hand 
upon Ann Mary’s arm. “If there’s something 
I should know, and don’t, you tell me. And 
tell me now.” 

“It’s keen ye are,” commented Ann Mary. 
“Well then, since you’re sure to know it later, 
ye might’s well have it sooner. But wid your 
ixperience ye shouldn’t be worried at th’ pros- 
pec’ o’ havin’ new relations.” 

“New relations,” echoed Josephine. “What 
new relations?” 

“Why, step-relations.” 

“What step-relations can I have?” 

“A step-ma, to be sure.” 

“Me?” 

“Aye. Who else?” Ann Mary shook her- 
self free, and going into the kitchen banged 
the door. She felt her own troubles were 
enough. After doing as she pleased for more 
than twenty-five years in the Dobard kitchen, 
the possibility of having to conform to new 
and possibly difficult ways vexed her. 

A great choking lump filled Josephine’s 
throat. Her father, “her only father,” she 
called him to herself, was going to bring a 
strange lady to his home, and he had 
not told her. Her heart thumped. Her 
head throbbed. She had a raging desire 
to pound something with her fists. She 


A NEW MOTHER 


249 

quite forgot she had ever aspired to be a saint. 
She had read several stories about stepmothers 
who had made their stepdaughters very un- 
happy. She would go away. There had been 
talk that Mrs. Thorne might take Miss Sad- 
well’s school. Soon, she, Josephine, would be 
old enough to be an assistant teacher. She 
would work for her board. She would do any- 
thing to escape the strange lady her father was 
going to put in authority over her. To think 
was to act, with Josephine. Straight down the 
street she went so intent upon her errand that 
old lady Dodson, out for a breath of air, observ- 
ing her, commented to herself, ‘T declare 
that girl goes like a mad bee that is going to 
sting.” 

Under Mrs. Thorne’s care, the Pardee house 
had become a delightful home, and it was she 
who opened the great carved front door as Jo- 
sephine flashed up the steps. “My dear,” she 
began as she drew Josephine into the spacious 
hall, “What is it? It is something, I am 
sure.” 

“Yes, and I’ll do anything, dear Mrs. Thorne, 
anything. I’ll study and work and try hard to 
be good if only you will let me come to 
you.” Josephine flung her arms about her 
teacher’s neck and sobbed with nervous 
excitement. 


250 JOSEPHINE 

course you can come here if you wish, but 
what has happened?” said Mrs. Thorne gently. 
“Tell me.” 

“It’s papa. Yes, papa Doctor’s going to be 
married. Ann Mary told me this morning just 
now. But Fidy Brierly knew it afore dear 
Grandma died. Everybody most did, I think, 
for Bina Forrest knew.” Again Josephine was 
shaken by mingled anger and astonishment. 
“Of course Grandma was step, but you had to 
love her after you knew her, but papa’s going 
to marry I don’t know who, and I don’t want 
to stay. It seems ’s if I couldn’t, as if I’d just 
burst if you can’t take me, dear teacherchen.” 
This name Josephine had used in private with 
Mrs. Thorne after a year’s study of Ger- 
man had made her familiar with its use of 
suffixes. 

“Josephine, — listen!” Mrs. Thorne gently 
pushed the girl from her, holding her elbows in 
a warm clasp. “It is I who am to be your step- 
mother and who will come to live in your 
house. Your father was to have told you this 
morning, but he was called away to a serious 
consultation so he sent word to me, and I was 
coming to tell you in his stead. As it was only 
last evening the decisive words were said, you 
see you have not long been kept in ignorance of 
our plans. 


A NEW MOTHER 


251 

^Wou! You!” Josephine’s eyes grew large and 
very dark, and also very bright till her face 
almost shone. 

“Yes, dear. If other people have guessed 
what it is to be, it is because people in a small 
place have little to interest them, and much 
time to watch the doings of neighbors and to 
speculate about their actions.” 

“I know.” Josephine made a sound between 
a sob and a chuckle. “Fidy Brierly said once 
that her Aunt Fidelia knows so much about 
Ferndale folks, she often knows things that are 
not so. I reckon the trouble with me is being 
too quick. If I’d taken just one think, I’d have 
remembered that all my people have been dear, 
and that my own father’d not be one to ask any- 
one to live with us all the time who isn’t beau- 
tiful inside and out. I hope I’ll outlive being 
excited over ‘bug-dust’ I do hope so.” 

“Bug-dust? — I do not understand.” 

“That was Dr. Vandercook’s word. He used 
it in many ways. It means trifles, foolish im- 
aginings, and anything not worth while.” 

“Bug-dust is certainly descriptive, and Jo- 
sephine, — ” 

“Yes, dear teacherchen.” 

“I shall try to help you to study and work, 
and to be good in my new relation, and you 
must help me.” 


252 JOSEPHINE 

“Help you? Oh, dear mother that is to be! 
The other girls can have their old mothers. 
I’ll never be envious again. I’m going to be 
no end happy with my new mother, and if 
loving will help you, you’ll have all the help 
you need. And all of us will have a real home. 
I’m not so very old yet, but I’ve found out 
folks make your home, not a mere house.” 


4 


•• 




r 


\ 




I 




t 


% 


t 


1 




1 


f 


% 


I 



Is 

A i/ ^ 



t 

« 


. i 


, fc I 7 


< ■ 












